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LECTURES ON GREAT MEN. 



EDINBURGH : 

PRINTED BY BALLANTYNE AND COMPANY. 

PAUL'S WORK. 



LECTURES 



GREAT MEN 



BY THIL-HATE 



THE I 

FEEDEEIC MYEES, M.A. 

INCUMBENT OP ST JOHN'S, KESWICK. 



WITH A 

PREFACE BY T. H. TARLTON, 

HONORARY SKCRETARY TO THE YOUfJG MEN'S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION. 



SecontJ (Etrition. 



LONDON: 

JA1\IES NISBET AND CO. 21 BERNERS STREET. 

MDCCCLVI. 



t 






But strew his ashes to the wind, 

Whose sword or voice has served mankind- 

And is he dead, whose glorious mind 

Lifts thine on high? 
To live in hearts we leave behind, 

Is not to die." 



CONTENTS. 





PAGE 


PREFACE, .... 


vii 


MARTIN LUTHER, 


1 


CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS, 


47 


FRANCIS XAVIER, 


78 


PETER OF RUSSIA, 


114 


JOHN WYCLIFFE, .... 


143 


SIR THOMAS MORE, 


172 


THOMAS CRANMER, 


205 


OLIVER CROMWELL, 


213 


GIROLAMO SAVONAROLA, . 


294 


GONZALES XIMENES, 


339 


GASPARD DE COLIGNY, . 


382 


GEORGE WASHINGTON, 


431 



PEEFACE. 



" He who has been enabled to see, even dimly, a world 
of Beauty and of Joy which his brethren do not seem 
to see, and to feel heaven-descended influences which 
his brethren do not seem to feel, — such an one cannot 
be happy to enjoy these things alone. To live in luxury 
while his brother is dying of want, to enjoy the light 
while those around him, though having eyes as he, 
yet see not, — there is no resting-place here for the ear- 
nest Christian Man." So spake, in 1840, the revered 
Fkederic Myers, when inaugurating plans he had 
formed for the spiritual education of his Parish. These 
words reveal the animating spirit of his noble efforts, 
of which these Lectures are " remains." He lived as 
one who felt that his Master's mission was his, to go 
about teaching truth and doing good. 

The works of a man's love are his works indeed, and 
of these Lectures it may be emphatically affirmed, they 
were the works of the Author's love. His heart glows 
in every page, witnessing his vivid sympathy with the 
subject of his discourse. He wrought out the strong 
conviction he felt, that the Clergyman of a Parish should 
be its " Educator," as well as Spiritual Guide — that the 
vast portion of most men's time allowed to run to waste, 



Vlll PREFACE. 

or rather to evil, might be occupied with better subjects 
of thought than those they usually have, and that men 
may be won from gross and polluting pursuits by the 
provision and adaptation of something better. In ad- 
dition, therefore, to the direct presentation of Gospel 
Truth, he sought to illustrate, and practically set forth, 
the advantages and the pleasures of mental culture. 
He built a handsome and very comfortable Reading- 
room for the Parishioners, and provided a Library con- 
taining books, not merely of a religious character, but 
of all such kinds as have a tendency to make men 
wiser in their several stations, or to furnish them with 
any recreation which may be consistent with the ear- 
nest pursuit of the serious concerns of life. He was a 
Pioneer in efforts which have of late become more fre- 
quent. We seem just beginning to learn, how hard it is 
for men, living the sad and stimulated life of our crowded 
cities, to enter that Spiritual Temple in which only 
Faith and Love can dwell ; and how great the necessity 
for agencies which may prove vestibules to its courts of 
holiness and joy. Some practical proof of feeling with 
men, must accompany preaching to them, if our nation's 
sins of covetousness and drunkenness are not to continue 
to our shame and sorrow. 

Perhaps no conviction more fully possessed the mind 
of Mr Myers, than that of the dreadful separation and 
want of sympathy of the various orders and classes of 
modern society ; that we have most unwarrantably apos- 
tatised from that spirit of brotherhood which is at once 



PKEFACE. IX 

the essence and the peculiarity of the Christian Church. 
He tried, therefore, to secure really Social Meetings. 
Once a month refreshments were provided, and every 
adult Parishioner invited, that special opportunities 
might he afforded of cultivating a spirit of sympathy 
with all sorts and conditions of men ; and that, in trying 
to see with their eyes, there might be cherished Cor the 
meanest a spirit, not of condescending charity merely, 
but of considerate and intelligent fellow-feeling. At 
these Meetings the accompanying Lectures were de- 
livered ; and there is ample testimony, from those who 
heard them, not only of the delight with which they 
were listened to, but also that the object chiefly contem- 
plated in such gatherings was to a great extent accom- 
plished. 

These Lectures afford ample illustration of the nature 
of the education he thought a working-man should de- 
sire ; that which most influences character for the better, 
and makes men happier,* that which is mainly the 
calling forth of those powers within a man, the culture 
of his whole nature ■ energy of all kinds — with the 
simultaneous cultivation of his sympathies — the nurture 
of Truthfulness, Justice, Love, and Faith. He fre- 
quently enforced the fact, that Labour is an ordinance 
of God, and inasmuch as it is a duty, it has a dignity ; 
that it is a mistake to think the necessity of daily work 
need hinder any from attaining whatever is of essential 
worth ; that it may rather prove no mean part of Educa- 
tion. He advocated the Education of Heart rather than 



X PREFACE. 

of Mind; such a cultivation of our humanity as may 
enlarge our sympathies, elevate our tastes, and help the 
recognition of Truth and the practice of Duty. He be- 
lieved that in the rich heritage we possess of means of 
improvement, few can be greater than the study of the 
greatest and best men of all ages. Moral qualities are 
best appreciated when presented in human forms. " If 
we want to give sight to the blind, we must be willing 
to do as Christ did — call them to us, and put our hands 
on them ; " and if we would have men see the beauty of 
Holiness — the strength of Truth — the weakness of 
whatever is False — what can be better than to set 
before them real men who have taken notable parts in 
the struggles of life ? 

It is very difficult for the men of one Church and 
Xation to understand and rightly appreciate the men of 
another. This difficulty Mr Myers overcame by his rare 
love of Truth, and by the power of sympathising with 
goodness in all forms, which was his in a very peculiar 
degree. In the beauty, the freshness, and the fulness 
of these Lectures, may be seen the results of the patient 
care of a mind of special gifts, and of deep and large 
cultivation. 

He believed, and therefore taught, that there is no 
respect of persons with God, but only of character ; 
that an eternity of bliss lies before the meanest as well 
as the greatest in this world, if only they will seek it in 
the appointed way ; that through Christ nothing avails 
but that which avails for all — a new creation of the heart. 



PREFACE. XI 

I have the privilege of introducing, and of most 
heartily commending these Lectures to the earnest atten- 
tion of thoughtful Young Men. Few works of the 
kind have appeared to me to contain so many seeds of 
life, or to be so well adapted to shew the superiority of 
character to faculty, and the true glory of well-doing. 
And who that knows the age we live in, but feels how 
much we need to set before us patterns of truth, of faith, 
of love, of integrity? These Lectures teach lessons which, 
if applied, may save us from the meannesses and the 
miseries of sin, and help us to work off Life's Loom, 
fabrics of enduring beauty and usefulness. They illus- 
trate the law of life which connects the hereafter with 
the present now — song with service — " the eternal 
leisure of calm love " with Time's " work of faith." 

We may not be Great Men, but we may render great 
service by fidelity to Christ, and to our brethren. "The 
iris in the dewdrop is just as true and perfect an iris as 
the bow that measures the heavens, and betokens the 
safety of a world from deluge." We may not be Apostles 
to the Indians, but, by God's grace, we may be Apostles 
of a Household — of a Profession. We may not be Ee- 
formers of Churches, but, however limited our gifts, we 
may remember and may imitate the deed of that poor 
Widow of Iona, whose cottage stood on an elevated 
ridge of a rugged and perilous coast, and whose heart 
was melted by the sight of wrecked vessels and the wail 
of perishing human beings. She thought, might not her 
lamp, if placed by her window, prove a beacon-light to 



XU PREFACE. 

keep some mariner off the coast ? All her life after, her 
lamp burned at her window during the winter nights, 
and the blessing of many a fisherman came upon her 
who thus " did what she could." We too, like her, 
may have some light ; may it so shine before men, that 
they, seeing our good works, may glorify our Father 
who is in Heaven ! 

" Oh, timely happy, timely wise, 
Hearts that with rising morn arise ; 
Eyes that the beam celestial view, 
Which evermore makes all things new. 

" If on our daily course our mind 
Be set to hallow all we find ; 
New treasures still of countless price, 
God will provide for sacrifice. 

" Such is the bliss of souls serene, 
When they have sworn, and steadfast mean, 
Counting the cost, in all to espy 
Their God, in all themselves deny. 

" Oh, could we learn that sacrifice, 
What lights would all around us rise ; 
How would our hearts with wisdom talk, 
Along Life's dullest, dreariest walk ! 

" The trivial round, the common task, 
Would furnish all we ought to ask ; 
Room to deny ourselves ; a road 
To bring us daily nearer God." 

London, December 1S55. 



MAETIN LUTHER. 



Great men are among the most interesting subjects on 
which we can meditate. There is scarcely anything so in- 
teresting to man as his brother man : because there is 
nothing else which so acts upon his sympathies : and sym- 
pathy is perhaps the most powerful of forces. We may feel 
much interest in a Thing, more in a Truth, but most of all 
only in a Man. Like is most moved by like ; and, therefore, 
that only which has Life, which has Feeling, which has Mind, 
can affect us most deeply. And of men, perhaps, those who 
have possessed in the greatest measure and cultivated to the 
highest degree the same kind of qualities which we ourselves 
are conscious of possessing, these are the most interesting to 
us : Imitable Great Men, in fact. 

But who is a Great Man ? 

By a Great Man I mean one who has done such works 
as none other man had done before him; who has in any 
way considerably exalted the standard of excellence which he 
found existing 5 who has heightened for us our idea of the 
capabilities of our common nature. To see things hitherto 
invisible to others, and so to embody them as that henceforth 



2 MARTIN LUTHER. 

others shall see them too — to attempt things heretofore im- 
possible to others, and so to realize them as that henceforth 
others shall do them too — either of these things is the token 
of a Great Man. The Greatest Men have been able both 
to See and to Do : they have combined in their characters 
equally insight and energy — elevation of mind and decision 
of will. But generally speaking, Great Men may be divided 
into two classes ; Men of Thought and Men of Action. 

Of the first class are, Poets and Philosophers, Men of 
Science and of Art, Discoverers and Inventors. 

Of the second class are, Statesmen and Warriors, Refor- 
mers of Society and Missionaries of Truth. 

The Poet is a great man ; for he is one who sees the 
Beautiful and the Influential, the Permanent and the Spiri- 
tual, in all around him — in Nature equally as in Man — and 
can utter his thoughts of them so clearly and so musically as 
that all they who have sound hearts shall echo them. Such 
was Shakespere — such was Milton. The Painter is a great 
man; for he is one who has within him a Type of Form 
which has no Archetype on earth, and yet can so clothe his 
Idea that all they who have keen eyes shall acknowledge its 
reality. Such was Raffaelle — such was Leonardo da Vinci. 
The Philosopher and Man of Science are great men : for 
they are those who have skill to read the generally illegible 
handwriting of Deity which is inscribed upon His works — to 
interpret appearances, to discover causes, to discern and to 
reveal the hidden springs of things, their Laws and Life; 
and knowing these, to conjecture something more than others 
of man's true position in the visible universe, and probable 
destiny beyond it. Such was Bacon, such was Newton. 
But men of this first class are not so interesting to us, or, 
perhaps, so instructive to us, as men of the latter ; because 
they are not so imitable by us. Mental endowments are 
most conspicuous in them, and the limit of these in ourselves 



MARTIN LUTHER. 3 

has been already in the main determined for us irrevocably 
by God: while the degree of our spiritual attainments is, 
through His grace, in a great measure dependent upon our- 
selves. No man can become as Newton if he has not been 
so peculiarly gifted of God : any man may become as Luther, 
be he now whom he may. Howard is imitable by all, 
Shakespere by none. And also, Intellect and Imagination, 
which are the characteristics of the first class, may exist with 
much moral meanness ; while superiority of Heart — which 
is the characteristic though not the invariable accompani- 
ment of the latter — is in itself an Universal Virtue. The 
men, then, of whom I shall from time to time speak to you 
at these Meetings will be men of this latter class — Men of 
Faith rather than of Science ; men who have been of great 
Soul rather than of great Mind ; men who have used their 
Intellect mainly as an instrument to work a Spiritual End 
with. 

And the man whom I account Great of Soul is he who 
has not only been gifted with an eye to discern the Right 
but also with a heart to love it : a man who cannot be con- 
tent merely to discover Truth, or to paint it, or to sing of it, 
but who, feeling that he possesses it, feels also that he has a 
Mission to proclaim it. A man who can be satisfied with 
nothing less than that which is Real and Right — who is 
content to count all things loss for the attainment of a 
Spiritual Aim, and to fight for it against all enemies — who 
deems Truth the Bread of Life and makes its pursuit his 
daily labour — he is a Great Man. A man who has a noble 
Cause, and who subordinates, and even sacrifices, himself to 
it — he is a Great Man. A man who does his Duty in 
despite of all outward contradiction, and who reverences his 
Conscience so greatly as that to preserve it unharmed he 
will face any difficulty and submit to any penalty — he is a 
Great Man. 



4: MARTIN LUTHER. 

Perhaps this kind of greatness can only be realized fully 
in a man who is a Religious man. The man who shall stir 
immeasurable masses must derive his strength from an 
alliance with the Almighty: The man who shall move a 
world must have his standing-place in the Invisible : He 
can only lift it from some point without it : and I believe 
that only point is, Faith in God. But at the very least, 
before a man can be a great man it is necessary to be 
emphatically a Man : to have no littlenesses, no weaknesses. 
All human qualities must be fully developed in him, while 
some of them must be extraordinarily so. The first elements, 
then, in the composition of the character of such a man as I 
have been speaking to you of, are, to Endure and to Dare 
more than other men: but these are not enough of them- 
selves to constitute a Great Man. To dare anything and to 
fear nothing ; to endure calmly and cheerfully even to die : 
to look inevitable evil in the face and not tremble, yea to 
seek danger and to love it — this is indeed to be a Man, but 
it is not necessarily to be a Great Man. For all this may 
be done by the savage or the selfish, by the foolhardy or the 
unthinking. Such qualities as these depend most upon 
what is physical, not necessarily anything at all upon what 
is spiritual ; and the indispensable condition of such Great- 
ness as I am speaking of is, greatness of Soul — Sacrifice of 
Self, and Devotion to a Cause. The truly noble thing is not 
simply to Endure or to Dare: but to do thus for unselfish 
ends, and when to do otherwise were easier. And the more 
spiritual the aim and the more single it is, the greater the 
man who sacrifices himself for it. To die for one's Country 
is noble, to die for one's Conscience is nobler. The armed 
Patriot dying amid trie shouts of multitudinous comrades 
may be a noble man : the solitary Martyr suffering for his 
Faith and praying for his Murderers, is a nobler. But I 
will tell you what is noblest of all : for one to be a Sacrifice 



MARTIN LUTHER. 5 

that he may be a Saviour. To be smitten that another 
through our stripes may be healed: to be content to be 
bound that others may be freed : to stand forth as a Substi- 
tute in Suffering in order to make Atonement between the 
Just and the Unjust — for One to exhaust in his own person 
the concentrated wrath of all the Powers of Evil that the 
Many may go unharmed — this is greatest, yea this is God- 
like, for this is Christlike. 

Now of this class of Great Men I do not know that I 
could bring before you a better type than Martin Luther. 
He was a great man in almost every way : his very faults 
were great : indeed, so great that I am very far from holding 
him up to you as a man altogether admirable, altogether 
imitable. No, he was a very imperfect, though a very 
remarkable, character : in many minor qualities most ques- 
tionable, though in the greatest most exemplary. But still 
after a patient study of his character as a whole, I cannot 
but honour Luther as one of the greatest of mankind. For 
to choose Pain, and Shame, and even if need were Death, 
rather than pleasurable life lacking Freedom to pursue and 
to proclaim the Truth ; in the midst of the fulness of bodily 
vigour and with adequate means of gratifying all cravings of 
the senses and of the mind, to put aside all those things 
which men naturally seek and live for, and to take up 
instead with lifelong toil as his work and only the Hope of a 
Better Resurrection as his reward — to do this firmly and 
calmly and consistently throughout the whole vigour and 
maturity of manhood — not with perpetual self-applause but 
rather as by an irresistible impulse from within — this is 
truly great : and this Luther did for thirty years daily, and 
therefore I think Luther a Great Man. 

But in speaking, as I must do, very highly of Luther, I 
would assure you that it can be no wish or object of mine 
unduly to magnify his merits. So to do, besides being 



6 MARTIN LUTHER. 

opposed to my sense of Justice, is not required by any 
theoretical views which I hold, evangelical or ecclesiastical. 
Though the member and the minister of a Church which 
unhappily is obliged to be Protestant, and which owes a 
deep debt of gratitude indirectly to the first and greatest 
of all modern Protestants, yet I in no degree feel myself 
bound to call any man its Master, or to allow any title to 
become dearer to me or more honoured than that of Catholic 
Christian. I honour Luther as a Reformer of a portion of 
the Catholic Church, not as the Founder of a new one. 
Our blessing is, brethren, (would it were less our boast and 
more our glory,) that we are not improbably lineally 
descended from the Church of the earliest age, and that 
we are certainly built upon the foundation of Apostles and 
Prophets, with none other for our corner-stone than one 
which is Divine. And though agreeing as I do in the 
main with Luther's theoretic statements of Gospel Truth, 
and glorying in the great outline of Luther's Confession of 
Faith as contradistinguished from that against which he 
protested, yet I am in no way concerned in identifying 
Luther's character with his creed. Luther was not the 
Truth : he only bore witness to the Truth : and the Truth 
stands on evidence of its own altogether unaffected by the 
channel through which it has been transmitted. And then 
again, believing as I do the Reformation in Germany in 
the sixteenth century to have been so good and so great a 
work as to have been the result of more than ordinary 
influences from God, I am less concerned than others who 
do not believe this to exaggerate the greatness or the 
goodness of Luther. Luther was thus confessedly but an 
Instrument : and surely the more imperfect the Instrument 
the more to be magnified is the Hand that works miracles 
with it. Nay, perhaps the notable thing in all interpositions 
of the Divine is, how apparently inadequate are the means 



MARTIN LUTHER. I 

employed to the result produced — how shadowy is the 
visible connexion between cause and effect. The more, 
therefore, you take from the greatness of Luther the more 
you t magnify the agency of God — a result I shall not object 
to if only you do not speak unjustly for your Maker. So 
far, however, am I from having an undue bias to speak 
too highly of Luther that I only fear that my prepossessions 
may draw me too far the other way. For my studies have 
led me to the general conclusion that the characters of 
most notable men are sadly inferior to the first impressions 
inspired by their words or their deeds: and therefore, if 
my estimate of Luther be a right one, he stands out as 
an exception to my general experience as a man worthy 
of his work — as one whose character corresponds to his 
mission. I feel that it would perhaps be more in keeping 
with the ways of Him who chose Bethlehem for His birth- 
place and not Rome — who was ministered unto by Women 
and not by Angels — and whose Apostles were no Philo- 
sophers but only Fishermen — I say, perhaps it would be 
more in accordance with His dealings to regenerate His 
Church by Luther were he the least of all Monks, than 
by that mighty Emperor his opponent on whose dominions 
the sun never set. Yet as one does trace in the peculiar 
calling of a Paul — the fittest of all instruments for the 
noblest of all works — the occasional introduction of another 
principle, perhaps this may be the case too in the instance 
of one who possessed more of the qualities of that chief 
of the Apostles than have since been combined in the 
character of any Preacher of Truth. And if God thus 
honoured Luther surely so ought we. If she who but 
broke a box of ointment on our Blessed Lord is to 
have a memorial whithersoever the Gospel is preached, 
it may be permitted us affectionately to bear in mind the 
deeds of one who re-opened for many generations that 



8 MARTIN LUTHER. 

well of the Water of Life which had been choked up 
for centuries with rubbish of man's superstitious offerings, 
and effectually exhorted myriads to drink of it and live. 
To think of the work which Luther was allowed to do 
and not to sympathise with him who did it, is unneces- 
sarily to defraud ourselves of what is naturally most 
ennobling (for there is an elevating purifying influence in 
the contemplation of all imitable goodness); and therefore, 
though I willingly admit that there is enough of weakness 
and of wilfulness in the character of Luther to impress 
upon us the wisdom and the worth of the precept, Keep 
yourselves from Idols, yet I verily believe that there is 
also at least abundantly enough in him both of greatness 
and of goodness to make him a most profitable subject 
for our earnest contemplation. 

The Story of Luther is this : 

On the 11th of November, 1483, St Martin's day, there was 
baptised by the name of Martin, at St Peter's Church at 
Eisleben in Saxony, a child of John and Margaret Luther, 
of that place. John Luther was a hardy, worthy, labouring 
man, much like other men of his class at that time : only 
with one element of superiority in him, a love of books. He 
was very badly off for work and wages when Martin was 
born : and six months afterwards he removed to Mansfield, 
where he had a better prospect of employment. Here he 
was at first a woodcutter ; and then afterwards worked about 
the mines : and then set up a furnace for smelting iron. He 
gets on better here, and by the time his son is able to go to 
school, he has become a town-councillor, and is able to enter- 
tain the ecclesiastics and schoolmasters of the neighbour- 
hood at his own house often. This is his greatest pleasure : 
and this love of books and of bookish men, gi^es him a 
great desire to make his son a scholar : and so earnest has 
he now become on this point that after his wife has taught 



MARTIN LUTHER. 



little Martin all she knows, he sends him to the best school 
of the town: and you might see this hardworking but 
enthusiastic man leaving his smithy regularly morning and 
evening to carry Martin to his school and fetch him home 
again, and all the way with over-earnestness exhorting and 
rebuking, questioning and chiding, the somewhat too care- 
less boy. Indeed, both his father and his schoolmaster were 
uncommonly severe with little Martin — even one day he 
tells us flogging him a dozen times. However, from what 
one sees of Luther's character in after life, we can readily 
fancy that he needed some extra discipline, for he had 
always a wilful, impetuous, over-vehement soul in him : and 
even if he needed not such stern schooling at the time, it 
was not perhaps without its use in training him for the work 
which lay before him in the invisible Future. Until he is 
fourteen, he is thus schooled, and grows up a hardy boy 
indeed, but withal somewhat melancholy and sad : with 
little sunniness in his life but what an irrepressible bodily 
energy will always occasionally produce. Out of school he 
runs about the streets, picking up and storing up all kinds 
of tales and traditions : the impulses of his nature leading 
him to listen and to look for all superstitious and super- 
natural things, till his whole soul becomes imbued with a 
sense of spiritual presences, and his memory a vast store- 
house of the strangest and wildest and most horrifying ap- 
paritions. All ghost stories, and strange dreams, and in- 
numerable traditionary legends of the Invisible becoming 
Visible, these are young Martin's playthings. No boy in 
Mansfeld is so full of such lore as he : none so familiar with 
visions, and dreams, and all mysteries : and none so im- 
pressed by them, so awed, so spiritualised, if one may so 
say : for really he lives more amid the unseen than the seen, 
and his mind seems but as a receptacle of spirits — a stage 
for all spectres to sport on. But when he is turned fourteen, 



10 MARTIN LUTHER. 

he is sent to another school and a better one — that of the 
Franciscans at Magdeburg — where he partly supports him- 
self (as was not unusual then and there) by begging out of 
school hours and singing in the streets. Here again he is 
thrown among the wild and the strange and the lawless, and 
is strengthened in all his peculiarities. But even with this 
help of ballad-singing, his parents (who have now got other 
sons and a daughter) though better off than they were, can- 
not manage to clothe him and pay his board and lodging and 
schooling : and so they take him away from this school and 
send him to one at Eisenach, where they have some rela- 
tions who they hope will do something for him. But these 
people do nothing for him ; so the boy is obliged to sing and 
beg as before. And so there at Eisenach you might see this 
boy — Martin Luther — ballad-singing before house and shop 
and stall ; seeming like other boys, shockheaded, light- 
hearted; reckless, rough, and happy; having scarcely any 
but a schoolboy's troubles, and only such wants as a few 
halfpence might remove. But had you stopped to talk to 
him, you would have found that he really had other troubles 
and other wants than these. You would have learnt that 
amidst all his rude joyousness, there was a deep tinge of 
melancholy — a strong subsoil of awe and mystery in his 
mind : that he lived more than half his time under powerful 
invisible influences, spectre-haunted, self-tormented — always 
lying down to sleep with a kind of solemn anticipation of 
spiritual revelations, and rising up often only as to dream of 
the more vivid realities of the night. And so, what with ill 
success in ballad-singing and perpetual communing with the 
Invisible, he leads a sorry life of it at Eisenach : till one day 
a kind burgher's wife — Ursula Cotta — being struck with the 
spiritual look of the boy, takes him into her house, and 
lodges him there some while. Here his heart begins to 
expand : the unnatural awe of the boy's spirit gives way to 



MARTIN LUTHER. 11 

kindness. He learns music, and grows cheerful, and enjoys 
himself much, without perhaps making much progress other- 
wise. But old John Luther will have his son to be as good 
a scholar as he can get him made : this is his unalterable 
determination, his reigning passion. He wants him to be 
a greater man than even the priests and schoolmasters he 
thinks so much of. He longs to be the father of a great 
Doctor: and so he takes him away from school and at a 
great deal of expense sends him to college — to Erfurth, the 
most celebrated then in all Germany. At college he does 
well; he reads very hard and distinguishes himself. Ex- 
cessive study brings on a dangerous illness : he gets better, 
however, and is made Master of Arts and Doctor of 
Philosophy, and is appointed to lecture publicly in Phi- 
losophy: which he does with great applause. Now his 
father's heart is glad. Martin, but twenty years old, and 
yet celebrated at the most celebrated of all universities — 
nothing can be better than this, (he thinks) I daresay I shall 
live to see him Professor: and who knows but that some 
day some one may see him Councillor, (not of a little town 
like me, but) Councillor of the State. Worthy John 
Luther's dreams are to come to pass truly enough, but quite 
otherwise than he is thinking. Martin will be a great man, 
but not exactly such a great man as he is picturing to him- 
self : a Councillor of State even, but not altogether such an 
one as had been heretofore. A change has already come 
over Luther's mind. That illness of his has made him more 
thoughtful than he was: and in the summer of 1505, when 
Luther is on a visit to his home at Mansfeld, he seems 
sadder and silenter than wont : and listens to the fond hopes 
of father and of mother, of brother and of sister, with little 
sympathy of enthusiasm. All mark this, but none say any- 
thing to him about it : for, they think, it may be because he 
has grown into consequence since he was at home last — or 



12 MARTIN LUTHER. 

it is the way scholars are — or he may be preparing his 
Lectures. When the time comes for returning to college, he 
sets out on foot with a friend. Just before entering Erfurth 
they are overtaken by a thunderstorm: his companion is 
struck dead at his feet, and himself stunned by the lightning. 
On coming to himself his first thoughts are, What shall it 
profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own 
soul? The things that are seen are temporal, the things 
that are unseen are eternal : Man giveth up the ghost and 
where is he? God be merciful to me a sinner: and so, 
while bending over the dead body of his friend, he makes a 
vow that henceforth he will live a new life, and renouncing 
the vanities of the world, seek first the kingdom of God and 
its righteousness. His mind is now agitated beyond measure 
with all kinds of thoughts and fears for his future destiny 
in that Infinite Invisible which he feels to be every where 
about him and very near — separated only by a veil which 
the next flash of lightning may roll up as a scroll. He has 
all manner of doubts, and is spiritually most wretched. He 
thinks of his illness, of his sickbed vows : of what he had 
read in a Bible he had chanced to light upon one day in the 
college library, and what he must do to be saved is now his 
all-absorbing thought. He knows no satisfying answer, and 
daily grows more miserable. And no wonder : for verily this 
is a most wearing question for any one who has no Word of 
God to answer it with. You who have such Christian privi- 
leges perhaps may think its answer so easy that your very 
children could not fail to know it. But, dear brethren, you 
must remember that it is in a good measure owing to this 
now poor blind struggling Luther whom we have before us 
that you and they are so wise. The Bible was very little 
read before Luther's time abroad, and still less understood. 
Luther had to guess at the answer, and he guessed wrong. 
lie guessed, A Cloister — that is the Strait Gate, the Narrow 



MARTIN LUTHER. 13 

Way : there will be Peace — there Prayer — there Penance : 
and I may in its sacred solitude entitle myself to the favour 
of the Almighty and fit myself for an inheritance above. 
And so he calls his friends together at supper, and tells them 
of the change which has come over him, and of his unalter- 
able determination to quit the college: and then he rises 
from supper and goes that very night — the 17th of August, 
1505 — into the monastery of the Augustinians close by, and 
there vows himself a Monk. His friends are astonished : 
his father, astounded. 

All John Luther's hopes and ambitious schemes are at 
once hereby laid low : he is hurt beyond expression at this 
renunciation of all the good prospects in life which he had 
procured by long self-denial and most earnest effort : and 
immediately renounces him as his son. We will, however, 
leave John Luther to his anger for the present, hoping 
to meet with him in a better mood bye and bye : and we 
will return to his more illustrious and less worldly son. 

The Monastery does not turn out to be the kind of place 
Luther had expected it to be: and he is so deeply disap- 
pointed with it that his mind is once more thrown back upon 
itself, and becomes tumultuous, confused, chaotic. He loses 
much of his spirituality, as it seems to me, now ; his 
earnestness degenerates into mere restlessness. He now 
enters with energy into all the schemes and broils and 
peculiarly profitless employments with which every un- 
naturally constituted society will always abound : and 
appears also to display some of those inconsistencies which 
characterise his whole life equally as do his virtues. But of 
this I know nothing for certain: only that he is uncommonly 
disliked by his brother monks and is harshly treated by 
them. They make him servant of all work to them, and 
will dispense with no hard service which the rules of their 
order will allow them to impose : and after all his menial 



14 MARTIN LUTHER. 

work is done within the walls, they send him forth for the 
rest of the day into the streets, to beg. Hard schooling is 
this : as hard as that of his childhood : but so long as 
he believes it is doing something towards gaining heaven 
for him he bears it cheerfully : for men in all ages and 
countries have always been found willing to do or suffer 
anything with this faith in them. With the notion that 
eternal life may be the wages of worldly effort or endurance, 
all toil and all suffering become light : while the thought of 
receiving it as a Gift, and then fulfilling the Law from Love, 
is so hard that only a few can bear it. So now it is with 
Luther : quite otherwise afterwards. The university, how- 
ever, intercedes that Luther's labours and penances may be 
lightened, and he is considerably relieved. He now betakes 
himself again to study, and attempts to satisfy himself 
about those questions which had so deeply agitated him 
as to send him into this strange place. He finds in the 
Library a Bible fastened to a Reading Desk (as used to be 
the case in our own country when Bibles were scarce), and 
of this he becomes an eager unremitting student: passing 
days and days continuously in reading it, and ever rising 
from it to mix among his brethren, a stranger, and more 
excited, and more solemn man. So earnestly does he read 
it that he omits his stated prayers for weeks together: and 
then the monks make him do all kind of strange penances 
and say all these prayers together, and so to fast that he 
is reduced to a dangerous state of bodily weakness. But 
with all this, he does not find what he is seeking, peace 
and purity of heart. The thought gradually comes to him, 
the more he reads, that he is not seeking aright. The 
writings of St Paul — a new doctor to him — the more he 
studies them seem to point quite in a different direction. 
These speak of Faith — Faith in Christ — as the Way, 
the Truth, and the Life: and throughout insist on it 



MARTIN LUTHER. 15 

that a man can never attain peace or purity of heart, 
through any doings or devices of his own, but certainly 
and only without them : and therefore he begins to believe, 
what he has long begun to suspect, that no formalism 
can help him, no monkish austerities, no bead-rolls, no 
mass work, no work of any kind : nothing but a new crea- 
tion. But how can this be? By renunciation of self 
and devotion to Christ — by coming to God as a beggar 
for alms and not as a workman for wages : by hav- 
ing not any righteousness of his own but that righteous- 
ness which is of God through Faith. Light breaks in 
upon him, fitfully amid clouds. But with every fresh 
gleam comes fresh hope : hope that, for his soul, the night 
is far spent and that the day is at hand. Great were his 
stirrings of heart : unintelligible, perhaps, altogether to those 
who have never felt the like doubts and never found the 
like solution of them. In Luther's case, however, it is 
peculiarly distressing, because all around him are against 
him: and verily in a matter of such absorbing interest it 
would seem to be almost maddening for a man to feel him- 
self alone amid his brethren : and when we read the ac- 
counts of the process by which many Christian men have 
become converted from natural to spiritual we see that their 
own words can but dimly describe it. With Luther the 
mental struggle is so great, and continues so long, that that 
iron frame of his wastes away. Happily the provincial of 
his order — Staupitz — now comes round on one of his visita- 
tions to the monastery. He observes this singular looking 
man — brother Augustin as they call him — with sunken 
eyes, downcast, and so thin that he could almost count his 
bones through his gown : he thinks there is something 
unusual about him : he remembers that he had been once 
somewhat thus himself: and so he inquires, and finds that 
Luther is a counterpart spiritually of what he himself had 



16 MARTIN LUTHER. 

been years before. They are reciprocally attracted : they 
converse freely : Luther reveals his heart fully to Staupitz, 
and Staupitz expounds to him the great doctrines of the 
Gospel which have given him peace of mind. On leaving 
the monastery he leaves with Luther his own Bible, with 
earnest admonition to read it daily. Luther does so, and a 
further change gradually comes to pass in him. He sees 
spiritual things he has never seen before: the old excite- 
ment revives: and with eager study of this Bible he is 
brought again nearly to the grave. Ill as he is bodily, he 
seems more so mentally : so disturbed, so despairing. An 
old monk who attends on him with most kindly care one day 
fixes his attention on the familiar words of the Creed which 
he daily repeats — I believe in the Remission of Sins — and 
reads to him a short commentary on them from St Bernard. 
This takes deep hold on Luther, and gives him a consola- 
tion that he cannot express. The crisis of his spiritual fever 
seems past : peace of mind gradually comes to him again, 
and with it health of body. From this time Luther is a 
man reformed : and he rises from his bed of sickness with 
enlarged views of his relation to God and of his eternal in- 
terests — of the needs of his nature and the divine provisions 
for their supply — and with the sternest resolutions to live 
henceforth no longer a selfish or self-dependent life, but 
one which shall be characterised by Faith on the Son of God 
and charity towards his neighbour. In fact I believe it may 
be said, that during this period of his history, that Reforma- 
tion which he was afterwards the means of working in the 
Church was being worked out symbolically in Luther's own 
heart : and if you would understand the work which he did 
in the world and why and how he did it, you must bear 
this continually in mind. Luther now has not merely read 
what he teaches, he has learnt it by heart; he has not 
merely thought it, he has felt it : the struggles of the heart 



MARTIN LUTHER. 17 

of man after peace with God which he dwells upon so much, 
he henceforth describes and treats as states of which he has 
been and is personally conscious : and the foundation which 
he is continually pointing to as the only sufficient one 
on which to build hope for eternity, he himself has made 
trial of, and pronounces on experience to be firm. Thus 
always he speaks with such power because he is dealing 
with what to him are Realities, and no mere theologi- 
cal formulae : thus it is that in all he says and does he has 
such sureness of footing, such steadiness of aim, such single- 
ness of purpose : and those who have not felt something of 
the same kind of process taking place in their own hearts as 
that which took place in the heart of Luther, will never 
understand the force and inward spring, though they may 
understand the results and outward history, of the German 
Reformation. 

Luther has now been two years in the monastery, and the 
time draws near for him to be ordained a Priest. He 
resolves to be reconciled to his father: and so he sends a 
dutiful message to him, to invite him to be present at his 
Ordination, telling him that if he will come he may fix his 
own day for the ceremony. John Luther — who though so 
grieved, because so disappointed, at Martin's becoming a 
monk — has forgiven him and loves him still with a love not 
lessened by the loss of two other sons meanwhile; he con- 
sents, and names the 2d of May (1507), and comes. Father 
and son are at one again : they bless each other : and part. 
Not long after his ordination Staupitz (who has kept up a 
regular correspondence with Luther ever since he was at the 
monastery) recommends Luther to the Elector Frederic, and 
he is appointed to a professorship at Wittemberg university. 
John Luther's heart at least is glad : the monk's not alto- 
gether so: for he knows that he shall have to teach the 
Philosophy of Aristotle and the Schools — to feed men with 



18 MARTIN LUTHER. 

husks : but perchance also he shall have liberty to do some- 
thing better than this — liberty to teach some diviner philo- 
sophy than this — at least he will have more opportunities, if 
not more leisure, for private study of the Bible : so he goes. 
At first he lectures only on Philosophy : soon on the Psalms. 
Herein the spirit of Luther begins to reveal itself: his 
lectures are full of force and life and heart-knowledge. 
They excite attention, and sustain it: crowds of students 
come to Wittemberg expressly for the benefit of them, and 
some of the professors there are to be found among his 
hearers. The fame of these lectures — the faculty which this 
rude monk has of uttering his very heart, and making his 
own earnestness infectious — induces Staupitz to appoint him 
to preach at the old Church of the Augustines in the town : 
and he is so remarkable here that the town-council choose 
him for their preacher in the largest church of the place: 
and the Elector himself now and then comes over to hear 
him. 

Luther now seems to have a clear wide prospect before 
him. But suddenly his path is stopped, or at least is 
turned. He is sent to Rome by his Order. As he journeys 
his mind grows rapidly : his views of the Church enlarge. 
He meets with many things in almost every day's journey 
which he had no thought of before. On his progress 
towards Italy he is confused : on his entrance into Lombardy 
confounded. The Churches want visitation, he thinks : his 
Holiness of Rome cannot know it : he will be thankful if I 
mention it to him. Simple Monk ! He falls ill at Bologna : 
the solemnity of his mind is deepened: he gets better, and 
gets on to Rome. It would be useless to mention the state 
of the provinces, he now believes : the Court, he sees, is so 
dominant over the Church : What sad bondage : What pity 
and what prayers are claimed by such Babylonish Captivity. 
He hastens away from the sight of it, and leaves Italy with 



MARTIN LUTHER. 19 

the object of his mission attained but disenchanted of that 
spell which the Holiness of Rome had bound around him 
from his youth : discontented though prosperous : and if a 
wiser yet emphatically a sadder man. 

On his return, the Elector makes him accept the degree of 
Doctor of Divinity, and pays its fees for him. Curiously 
enough it is bestowed upon him by a man (Carlstadt) who 
is Professor of Divinity there, and yet never has read the 
Bible. This was in 1512. For the next four or five years 
Luther lives a studious quiet life. He had learned some 
Hebrew from a celebrated Jew at Rome (Elias Levita) and 
now is making himself a first-rate scholar. He continues his 
lectures and preachings as he did before his visit to Rome: 
only it is now observable that there is something different 
in the tone of them. All are now coloured with the 
doubts and convictions which had come to him from that 
visit : and which are now strengthened in him daily by the 
attentive reading of Sacred Scripture which his study of 
Hebrew forces upon him. This brings upon him the 
indignation of his brother monks and gets him into continual 
controversy. There is an excitement and stir in this old 
town of TVittemberg which there never was before, and 
the reputation of it spreads, and many come to the College 
mainly because Luther is there. 

In 1516, Luther is deputed by Staupitz to hold his visita- 
tion of the monasteries instead of him: of Erfurth among the 
rest. This visitation gives him still further insight into the 
system of ecclesiastical and monastic establishments. He 
feels an aversion which he had never before felt to many 
portions of both. He finds that the state of his feelings 
and spiritual taste has changed very much since he lived 
wholly in a monastery himself. His knowledge of the 
world and of his own heart and of the Bible, has much 
increased since then, and his ways of viewing many things 



20 MARTIN LUTHEK. 

are changed correspondingly. The naturally practical cha- 
racter of his nrind, and its now superadded spirituality, 
will not allow him to be satisfied with — or even tolerant 
of — such multiplied and meaningless forms as he has 
to deal with: he must have life, he must have spirit in 
them, or to him they are mere deceits, Against all things 
of this kind he was a born rebel. He could not love 
what he did not believe, and what of these things he did 
not love he hated and was determined to destroy. But 
with all his controversies consequent hereupon, and all 
his battles, and all his vehemence, and all his violence, 
he soon proves himself a faithful and a brave man in 
something better than this: for when all others fly from 
a pestilence this year at Wittemberg, Luther remains : 
displaying here the same heroism of heart and the same 
faith in God which afterwards so especially distinguished him. 
In 1517 comes Tetzel with his Indulgences. Luther 
heard of him and his doings when on his visitation the 
year before : but what brings these before him now is this, 
that his penitents — those to whom he prescribes penance 
in the confessional — come to him with Indulgences which 
they have bought of Tetzel and plead them as dispensations 
from the penances he imposes. Luther denies their vali- 
dity. Tetzel affirms it with vehemence. A controversy 
between Luther and Tetzel arises. Luther preaches against 
these Indulgences, and prints his sermon: on the Feast 
of All Saints he placards on his church door Ninety-five 
Theses, challenging refutation ; not at all an unusual kind 
of thing to do. It is the time of a public Fete at Wit- 
temberg: the consecration of a new Church, and a kind 
of Fair. The town is full of strangers, of foreigners. A stir 
is made about these Theses which are posted up there in 
everybody's way. People crowd about them, read them, 
talk about them, copy them: get them printed, circulate 



MARTIN LUTHER. 21 

them far and wide. Luther himself is surprised and 
pleased with the interest his Theses create : he too begins 
to print and to publish : explanations, expositions come 
out: and when some months afterwards he has to attend 
a Chapter of the Augustines at Heidelberg, he finds that 
he must dispute about the Pardon of Sin and the Power 
of the Pope. Nothing loth, he argues, exhorts, declaims ; 
and finds that the knowledge and the love of his doctrine 
has spread and is spreading: and he returns to ATittemberg 
improved and strengthened in every way. 

On his return, finding that all kinds of false representa- 
tions are being made, he sends his Theses with an Exposi- 
tion of them to the Pope. This was on Trinity Sunday, 
1518. On the 7 th of August Luther is summoned to appear 
at Rome. He has strong sympathy and support in "Wittem- 
berg now, and the plans of others falling in with Luther's 
wishes, he is permitted to appear before the Pope's Legate 
instead of before himself: curiously enough, however, the 
Brief which so orders, dated 23d of August, condemns and 
excommunicates him beforehand. Luther receives in due 
form a summons to appear before Cardinal Cajetan at 
Augsburg. He is strongly advised not to go : but he goes : 
on foot : the Elector giving him some money, and he bor- 
rowing a coat on his way of a friend. He falls ill on the 
road, and enters Augsburg in a waggon faint and exhausted. 
Every advantage is taken of his weakness, by friend 
and enemy, to dissuade him from appearing before the 
Legate : but he appears : and though solicited and threa- 
tened and flattered and commanded, on every side — he will 
not recant. Staupitz now releases him from the obli- 
gation of obedience to his Order. Attempts of all kinds 
are renewed to force him from his position : but in vain. 
Having done all he stood, and to stand only was to conquer. 
All is uproar at Augsburg : Luther remains among it four 



22 MARTIN LUTTIER. 

days longer than any of his friends ; and then quits the city 
secretly, leaving an appeal to the Pope to be duly posted. 
He returns to "Wittemberg, and publishes an account of the 
conference. He has another conference with a papal deputy, 
Miltitz (a Saxon Knight), and a truce is agreed on : namely, 
that he will abstain from all hostilities so long as his oppo- 
nents will do so too. He now thinks of spending his life, 
until any clear call of duty should arise, in study and the 
private propagation of what he may from time to time 
deem the Truth : he purposes retiring to Paris, where he 
should have more leisure and more liberty — and is preparing 
to do so. 

But now an event occurs which affects Luther's cause 
very much, but not, as one would say, very directly. Maxi- 
milian, the Emperor of Germany, dies, 12th of January, 1519, 
and Charles the Fifth succeeds. On the 3d of March, Luther 
writes a submissive letter to the Pope, declaring that he will 
never seek to weaken by force or fraud his power, or the 
power of the Church of Rome : and having done this he 
gives up the thought of going into France — there being now 
little inducement to do so — and betakes himself again to the 
quiet performance of his University duties, and to that 
greatest of all duties for every man, his own education. For 
his own benefit he begins to study Ecclesiastical History 
more deeply than he ever yet has done : he examines into 
the old foundations of the existing ecclesiastical system : he 
studies the Decretals and the Canon Law. He lives quite 
privately now : and now all is peace : the truce we spoke of 
seems likely to last for at least two years longer, for the 
Archbishop of Mentz, to whom the consideration of the 
whole matter has been referred, postpones it so long. Not 
for so long, however, is it really deferred : for a Dr Eck 
(who has already been an opponent of Luther's, and is just 
now somewhat elated by a considerable accession of reputa- 



MARTIN LUTHER. 23 

lion which he has gained by his writings) puts forth Thirteen 
Theses — a not unusual substitute for publishing a book — 
inviting a disputation : and in one of these Theses, he 
asserts very strongly the Primitive Primacy of Rome, resting 
the proof of it on the Decretals — those Decretals which 
Luther is just now fresh from the study of, and which, I 
should add, he believes he has discovered to be forgeries. 
Luther's spirit is roused, but, one is happy to say, in this 
instance it is also restrained : for he does not publicly notice 
these Theses of Eck's. Carlstadt (who, you recollect, con- 
ferred the degree of Doctor of Divinity on Luther) is the 
man who replies. But Eck is not content with having any 
one inferior to Luther for his opponent, and so challenges 
Luther publicly and personally : and when Luther replies 
that he cannot accept the challenge on account of his pro- 
mise to Miltitz, Eck engages to get him the permission 
through the influence of Duke George (no friend to any 
Reformation) to allow him to dispute at Leipsig : and does 
so. And so now at Leipsig there comes on a public dispu- 
tation between Eck and Carlstadt for eight days : between 
Eck and Luther for twenty days : in the Duke's palace, and 
in his presence and the presence of his court. The result 
of this is apparently nothing for the conviction of his oppo- 
nent by either, but only that each party claims the victory. 
Luther appeals for a verdict to the people, Eck to the Pope : 
Luther publishes at home, Eck goes on a secret mission to 
Rome. This disputation, however, really furthers very much 
Luther's cause. It has gained him a new standing place 
and a new organ on which and with which to proclaim his 
doctrine : and it so increases the reputation of his University 
that the youth out of the country crowd to be his pupils, 
and thus are brought within his influence very much more 
than otherwise. And in Luther's own mind it is the means 
of working a very considerable change : for his attention is 



24 MARTIN LUTHER. 

drawn by it to important points which he had not before 
entered upon : and herein he makes such great and unex- 
pected discoveries that he afterwards dates his deliverance 
from the bonds of Rome from this time : and from this year, 
No Peace with Rome, becomes his motto. 

A Diet of the empire (a kind of Parliament) is to meet at 
the beginning of next year at Worms — it ought to meet at 
Nuremberg, but there is a pestilence there just at this time — 
and so in the June of this year Luther publishes a pamphlet 
which he intends should influence the deliberations of the 
Diet with respect to the Church. He calls it, An Appeal 
to the Christian Nobility of the German Nation : and a very 
notable book it is. He follows this up by another called, 
The Babylonish Captivity of the Church, and writes a letter 
to the Pope At the end of September, Eck brings back 
with him from Rome a Bull from the Pope against Luther, 
pronouncing him excommunicate. On the 10th of November 
Luther publishes a pamphlet, Against the Bull of Antichrist, 
and An Appeal to a General Council: and then on the 10th of 
December he burns the Bull, Decretals, and Canon Law in 
one of the most public places of Wittemberg. By this act he 
at once makes himself excommunicate. The whole place is 
astir, fearfully unquiet : but not so Luther : he goes home 
and lectures upon the Psalms, 

The Diet in due time assembles at Worms, and a Com- 
mittee of it draw up a list of One Hundred ecclesiastical 
grievances, and present it to the Emperor. The Emperor 
appears to be astonished and to bethink him that there 
really may be something in Luther's case, and has him sum- 
moned. As soon as the summons reaches Luther, his mind 
is made up. He delays not a moment : he feels it to be a 
crisis : he is resolved what to do and, if need be, what to 
suffer. People crowd about him and talk of Danger; Luther 
talks of Duty and puts them away from him. He sets out 



MARTIN LUTHER. 25 

in a waggon with an imperial herald before him. His jour- 
ney is a kind of triumphal procession. In every town 
through which he passes, young and old come out of their 
doors to wonder at him, and some there are who bid him be 
of good courage, some who bless him. As he approaches 
Worms crowds come out to meet him : friends and enemies 
throng around him, and are alike urgent with him that he 
shall not enter into the town : even the Elector's private 
secretary, Spalatin, (who was Luther's most intimate friend 
and counseller) sends to him as he is entering to beg him 
not to do so, as there is danger he is not aware of. But 
Luther will enter Worms. And I know scarcely any finer 
scene in all history, than this of Luther at Worms. As 
soon as he arrives his lodgings are crowded inside and out 
with all classes and all kinds of persons : soldiers, clergy, 
knights, peasants, nobles by the score, citizens by the thou- 
sand. The day after his arrival he is sent for into the Coun- 
cil Hall. And so the Excommunicate One stands there be- 
fore the Emperor and Two Hundred of his princes and his 
nobles : the man whom any man may slay confesses Christ 
unharmed before Kings. His being there at all is in itself 
a victory over Rome. They ask him to Recant : he begs 
time to consider of it. A day is granted: and when he 
comes in again next day, he refuses to do so with great 
gentleness. He had said before he set out, If they kindle a 
fire which shall reach from Wittemberg to Worms, and also 
unto heaven, I will go through it, God helping me, and bear 
witness to the Truth ; I will enter into the very mouth of 
Behemoth and preach Christ from out of it : and now when 
standing on his trial he says calmly, If I have done evil, 
bear witness of the evil: I believe that I have done no 
wrong : shew me that I have, and I will submit : Until I 
am better instructed I cannot recant : It is not wise, it is not 
safe, for a man to do anything against his Conscience : 



26 MARTIN LUTHER. 

Hereon I stand : I cannot do otherwise : God help me : 
Amen. Intrepid and unwavering, collected and even cheer- 
ful, stands that monk in his sergecloth and cowl: and 
having spoken thus — bowing lowly often but seeming ever 
to rise again to more than his natural height — he retires. 
Those clothed in soft raiment there sit restless on their 
chairs of state. They have heard words which have entered 
into their hearts as Fire : purifying some, withering others, 
inflaming all. The session is prolonged into darkness. 
Again, amid torchlight and silence, Luther is brought in, 
and says No to the challenge of the Church and of the 
Empire, and stands unmoved at its echo. Without fanati- 
cism or theatrical effect of any kind, he carries himself 
calmly : free alike from giddiness or boasting, he stands on 
that pinnacle, with a nation looking up at him: and bears 
brave witness to the Truth from it, and descends from it 
with the universal acknowledgment that amidst all the 
pageantry of an Imperial Senate, he is the noblest of the 
noble there, and the royallest of its kings. 

As he had entered Worms unawed so he leaves it un- 
harmed; and on his way back to Wittemberg he is seized 
with friendly violence, and made a prisoner in the Warte- 
burg. With this captivity of the Warteburg ends the scenic 
history of Luther's life. 

And so while he is a kind of prisoner here, let us look at 
him for a moment or two, and see what he is like bodily. 
There then in that cage of a castle we see a farmer-looking 
man, in hunting coat and boots ; a large-boned, fleshly, for- 
midable man : a man apparently of no refinement, or deli- 
cacy of nerve : of coarse countenance and small sunken 
eyes : vehement in his gestures and uncouth in manner and 
in movement: of no classic mould any way, but gothic 
throughout. He looks like a man constructed in every way 
fpr strife : ready to battle with any one or with many : 



MARTIN LUTHER. 27 

Titanic: at once an Ishmael and a Samson: with passions 
of the strongest and no fears. Such seems he when alone ; 
but if any one comes in to him, and sits down with him, 
and they talk, you see that underlying and counteracting all 
this bodily strength of his, there is a deep melancholy, a 
tenderness and singular afTectionateness of heart: nay, that 
between all the clouds of thought and sadness there are 
bright interspaces of intense humour, and sunny profuse 
pleasantry. Rough indeed is he in his jesting, sometimes 
almost beyond all human bearing, as giant's play must ever 
be : but so hearty, so kindly withal, that if any one can but 
bear it, they cannot hate it. His talking is ever interspersed 
with the strangest expressions and allusions: idiomatic ex- 
traordinarily : thoroughly genuine and earnest but corre- 
spondingly disorderly and desultory : prolonged : exciting 
oftenest passion in himself, always wonder at least in those 
who listen. And when he is alone again you sec him often 
rise from his chair and walk about the room — ejaculating 
strangely and often praying ; and then with fresh resolve sit 
down to the table whereon are lying many scattered papers 
and some half-dozen books : One of the largest of these you 
cannot but notice is in strange characters : and on looking 
at this for a minute or two he snatches up one or two of the 
others and turns over the leaves rapidly and returns to the 
Big one sometimes with calm pleasure but oftenest with 
clouded brow and impassioned ejaculation, and resting of his 
head upon his hand. And what is this? Luther translat- 
ing the Bible. 

Nine months does he stay at the Warteburg doing thus : 
but he finds he cannot get on so well here as he thinks he 
might do at "Wittemberg : and so he leaves the "Warteburg 
without leave, and goes back to Wittemberg, and goes on 
living there just as if nothing had happened since he was 
there before. Strange man this Luther, is he not ? a bold 



28 MARTIN LUTHER. 

brave man, at least. And at Wittemberg he does manage to 
live notwithstanding that he is Excommunicate : and mar- 
ries, and brings np a family, and publishes a Translation of 
the Bible in German, and innumerable books : he enters into 
controversies with Erasmus, Henry VIII., the Sacrament- 
aries; organises churches and governs multitudes: takes part 
in whatever is important to the cause of Religious Liberty in 
his own nation and in others, for Twenty Years and more ; 
and at the age of sixty-three dies in his bed in the town in 
which he was born. 

Thus after a vigorous struggle of more than threescore 
years with all manner of vehement enemies, fleshly and 
spiritual, and a thirty years' special wrestling with Popes, 
Emperors, and Nobles, disappears from our view Martin 
Luther, to appear in the presence of One who, I feel sure, 
notwithstanding his many imperfections, will pronounce to 
him his well-known sentence, "Well done, good and faithful 
servant. 

And now before I proceed to lay before you some slight 
estimate of Luther's character, I must say once for all that 
all modes of accounting for his conduct and its results, by 
anecdotes and secret histories, and hypothetical motives, I 
look upon as utterly inadequate, to say the least. Little sen- 
tences too of philosophical explanation and mild literary re- 
marks about enthusiasm and ambition are but poor shadows. 
A Nation cannot be permanently convulsed by an unarmed 
enthusiast, nor a Church thoroughly regenerated by a self- 
seeking hypocrite. That which has such life in it as to 
overthrow what before it was deemed invincible, and to get 
itself established instead, and to stand, and to spread through- 
out nations and centuries as a satisfying Faith, must be ac- 
counted for quite otherwise than thus. Nor will any sugges- 
tions as to how political events and public opinion favourably 
concurred help us much better. For long before there were 



MARTIN LUTHER. 29 

any fortunate political coincidences, Luther stood alone, suc- 
cessfully fighting against Principalities and Powers : and no 
one of his contemporaries was his forerunner or his guide. 
There had been in other countries, it is true, attempts at Re- 
formation by Christian heroes : but their feebleness and the 
infelicity of their results only make more manifest the great- 
ness of Luther. Luther indeed in the latter years of his life 
became the idol of the people : but at first he had no friends, 
no helpers, no patrons : he created the party which he ruled, 
and he stirred up the feeling which cheered him on. Before 
Luther there was no popular impulse towards Reformation : 
within ten years after his death, the Reformation was esta- 
blished as fully and as firmly as now. 

The more I consider the story of Luther, the more I be- 
come confirmed in the conviction that Luther was through- 
out a true, genuine, sincere man : that he believed what he 
taught to be essential truth, and would at any time have 
laid down his life for his belief ; and that the glory of God, 
and the good of his brethren, were the ruling objects of his 
life. He had many spiritual infirmities : very many : but 
that of Insincerity, I believe, was not one of them. Nay, I 
would go so far as to assert, and to stake all my credit with 
you for a knowledge of human nature on the assertion, that 
Luther could not have been insincere : and that insincerity 
was just that vice which could not consist with his univer- 
sally admitted qualities. Insincerity will ever betray itself, 
give it time enough, in acts of weakness and of selfishness : 
it is incompatible with sustained strength and lifelong man- 
hood. And surely if Luther presents to us any one quality 
prominently and indisputably, it is that of thorough manli- 
ness, and even almost gigantic strength. Indeed, Luther 
had no littlenesses that I know of, even no eccentricities. 
Coarse, clumsy, careless was he, but never cold or calculat- 
ing or cunning. From his irregular undisciplined vehe- 



30 MARTIN LUTHER. 

mence, you might perchance sometimes suspect him mad : 
but never could you, even in his most unguarded moments, 
suspect him mean. No : Luther was inconsistent, but he 
was not insincere. Nay, his very want of consistency is to 
me a strong proof of his honesty. For it is exactly what you 
would expect in a man educated as he was, and coming to a 
knowledge of the Truth in such irregular ways, and whose 
mind, when it had once for all received into it new elements, 
was yet always in a state of fermentation, and seems at no 
time of his life to have become quite clear. His views are 
exactly such as you would expect those of a man would be 
who had been couched : first men as trees walking, then as 
men in form and stature indeed, but never at all, perhaps, 
in colour and true expression. You see in Luther, in fact, 
exactly the fluctuations which are the characteristics of the 
most earnest men : they are always oscillating between the 
highest and lowest states of feeling; believing themselves 
reprobate at one time, inspired at another. Eead the 
accounts which some of the most eminent Christians have 
given of their own feelings at certain crises of their histories, 
and you will see what I mean : and at least you will see that 
the commonplace phlegmatic men — the worldly or the weak 
— are no fit judges of such. They feel no Infinite Forces, 
they have no Infinite Aims. They may judge correctly of 
their like : but if they would not furnish the precise measure 
of their own littleness, their policy is to keep silence of the 
Great. 

And what was the work which Luther did ? He emanci- 
pated half Europe (I trust for ever) from the curse of great 
errors on matters of greatest importance to man's eternal 
interests, and diffused through the same the light of the 
knowledge of the way of access to God through Jesus 
Christ alone. He restored to men a true exhibition of their 
peculiar relation to God through Christ, which had been 



MARTIN LUTHER. 31 

obscured for a thousand years : he so proclaimed the distin- 
guishing and life-giving doctrines of the Gospel as that they 
took effect upon the hearts of men then, and have lived in 
them till now. He saw with a clearness such as none for 
centuries before him had seen the importance of such truths 
as these : That we can learn little of God's purposes towards 
man anywhere but from Christ : That the desire to justify 
ourselves, and to depend upon our own strength in getting 
to heaven, is the misery and destruction of man : That by 
the most earnest striving to fulfil the moral law we cannot 
obtain peace of heart : That Faith in Christ and Obedience 
to Him flowing from that Love which such Faith must 
inspire — is the only permanent source of peace of heart and 
purity of life: That the Principle from which anything 
is done can alone give it worth in God's sight, and that 
therefore we do not become good by doing good works, 
but when we are good we do good works. God's sympathy 
with man, and Man's responsibility to God — the necessity 
of the Holy Spirit's influence, and the efficacy of Prayer 
— the entire absence of merit on the part of man, and 
the thorough freeness of Remission of Sin — how strong 
and happy we may be if united to Christ through Faith, 
and how apart from Him we can be neither: these things 
Luther saw and taught when no man about him did so. 
Now, it was the proclamation of such truths as these 
that gave Luther his power over the hearts of his fel- 
lows. The faithful preaching of the Gospel of God — 
the earnest, bold, free, assertion of the Remission of Sins 
through the blood of Christ, and through it alone — his 
knowing and stating the true answer to the question which 
every earnest man must answer somehow, What must 
I do to be saved? — his having and teaching the true 
doctrine about those things which all men are most inter- 
ested in, Repentance and Regeneration, Belief and Duty. 



32 MARTIN LUTHER. 

Faith, Hope, and Lore — this was what gave Luther the 
lever whereby he moved Europe from its old foundations. 
He had the Truth in him and other men had not, and 
herein was the secret of his strength: thus men were to 
him but as Philistines to Samson, as a Forest to Fire, 
as innumerable Birds of Darkness to Light. Verily, dear 
brethren, there is nothing so powerful as a Truth, there 
is nothing so practical as a Principle: and it is one of 
the most sublime as well as one of the most simple of 
all sayings, That man lives not by Bread alone, but by 
Words which come forth from the mouth of God. And if 
it be thought that these truths, and such as these, it is 
not much to discover, they are written so plainly in the 
Bible: I answer, it is mainly, though not directly, through 
Luther that we now read every one in our own tongue the 
wonderful words of God. He was the first that so laid 
them open as to make them the inheritance of a nation. 
Before you fix then your estimate of what Luther did, 
consider well this his Translation of the Bible. Few such 
good works has it been permitted any one man to do so 
singly and so well. Our English Version, the work of Many, 
is on the whole the best I know of: but Luther's is the 
most wonderful as the work of one man : for he not only 
transfused the essence of the Original into his Translation, 
but also actually regenerated the language into which he 
translated it : for Luther's translation of the Bible forms 
a distinctly marked epoch in the history of the German 
language. And if after all we do not think so much of 
what Luther thus achieved as his contemporaries did — ■ 
if he does not seem to us to possess such superior light or 
vision — then let us remember that he is not The Seer 
perhaps only because we through his light have been made 
Seers too : and that perhaps to light up so many of his 
brethren's torches as that his own shall grow dim in the 



, 



MAETIN LUTHEB. 33 

multitudinous blaze — to decrease only because he has made 
his fellows increase — this is the noblest work and the 
noblest wages which can be given to man. 

This work of Luther's, as I have already said, was 
gradually accomplished : it was no preconcerted ready-made 
scheme; no well-organised revolutionary Theory. It was 
nothing that was made once for all : it was something 
that grew. The work therefore was ill done in many parts 
of it, imperfect, unsymmetrical. Indeed so many points 
had sometimes to be proceeded with at once, and to be 
determined upon on the instant, that nothing but super- 
human intellect and energy could have avoided occasional 
errors and frequent inconsistencies. The Reformation was 
effected with various light : beginning in comparative 
darkness, and being carried on and enlarged as fresh light 
came into Luther's own mind. Its Inconsistencies then 
are evidences of its reality: its Variations are at once the 
symptoms and the consequences of its Progression. Let 
us look at this point for a moment. Luther at first was but 
a reformer of practical abuses, and even so late as at the 
Diet of Worms was ecclesiastically a bigoted Romanist. 
You remember that it was not until five years after Luther 
returned from his visit to Rome, where he had become so 
acquainted and impressed with the corruptions of the Church, 
that Tetzel came to Wittembcrg: and for all that time he 
had never stirred in any matter of theoretical or practical 
reform. And when he did turn Reformer, his was no theo- 
retical crusade against Popery : of all ways his was the most 
practical way of going to work : and in no wise rash. Look 
at him when he publishes those first Theses of his. He has 
seen and felt the falseness and wickedness of some portions 
of the ecclesiastical system for five years : and in his fiery 
nature such practical abuses have been rankling daily : but 
he does not go out of the way to attack them. He is dis- 

c 



34 MARTIN LUTHER. 

charging his duty as Professor and Preacher and Priest at 
Wittemberg, and an abuse molests him there, by practically 
contradicting what he has been sworn to teach and to do: 
and then only he repels it. So then, I ask, if Luther did 
wrong here, what ought he to have done? To have held 
his peace. Nay, he is one who fears God and loves his 
neighbour; and withal emphatically a Man — one whose 
prerogative is Speech. It appears to me that nothing could 
be more right than what he does. He is a Professor of 
Theology and a Teacher of the Church : and he speaks 
according to what he understands of the Oracles of God, and 
not against any authoritative decision of the Church : for you 
must remember that it was the Sale of Indulgences, rather 
than the Principle of Indulgences, that he began with oppos- 
ing : and that even when he went further, the Church had 
not pronounced any decree on the question. The whole 
thing was a mere temporary expedient of ecclesiastical ad- 
ministration ; and Luther contended against it as a Novelty. 
Wherefore on all grounds I hold him acquitted in this matter 
of erroneous enthusiasm. 

And so also look at him again in that affair of Burning 
the Bull. This act of his has been blamed ; I am for it. 
Had Luther done any such act as this at first, I should have 
been inclined to pronounce him rash and wrong. But he 
has now had at least seven years to understand his position 
— to ascertain the stability of it — to count the cost of it. 
And taking such view of it as weak eyes can do at such a 
distance, it does seem to me that that Procession of Doctors 
and of citizens — that crowd half-collegiate, half-popular — 
which streams forth on that cold mid-winter day from the 
Hall of the University to the City Gate — amidst the silent 
wonder but busy following of the multitude — is no vain 
show : and that piling and lighting of wood where they stop, 
and standing forth of that Monkish Doctor and casting of 



MARTIN LUTHER. 35 

paper victims into the blaze with loud but calm speeches — 
is no mountebank trick, no theatrical bombast. It seems to 
me rather a grand symbolical act, done with meet, not mock, 
solemnity. It is a public irrevocable proclamation of battle 
by one man against myriads, under the conviction that he 
was as David, the champion of God's cause, they as Philis- 
tines, with a mere Goliath for a captain. It is as a burning 
of vessels when disembarking on a hostile shore. I like it : 
it is a brave deed : teaching us all a great lesson : trying a 
great cause in the face of the world fearlessly : a cause in 
which we are as interested as he — namely, how powerful 
Truth and Justice and the Gospel can be : whether they are 
not more powerful only aided by the energy of earnest souls, 
than all pomp and power, all wealth and force and number, 
allied to but shadowy semblance of the Truth. Verily 
Luther was here our champion : the representative of all 
men who protest against Spiritual Tyranny of all kinds; 
and I thank God that at that East Gate of Wittemberg, 
beside the Holy Cross there, Luther was permitted by that 
burning of the Bull, to light up a flame which has not yet 
at least gone out. 

Certainly Luther was what may be termed an Enthu- 
siast : but his Enthusiasm never degenerated into Fanati- 
cism. It could ever coexist with calmness of thought, with 
a sense of justice, and the wisest and most persevering 
energy. He never ran headlong into danger, though 
certainly he never shrank from it. He never courted 
martyrdom by insolence, or deprived himself of an oppor- 
tunity by imprudence. He avoided going to Rome though 
he went to Worms : he did not refuse to face Cajetan at 
Augsburg, but he fled thence when his duty was done. 
In all his innumerable dealings with his adversaries he 
scarcely ever made a blunder: and he guided or governed 
his friends with a wisdom which earned success. He 



86 MAIITIN LUTSS&i 

sounded (he cause- of I lie weak in flic ears of (lie powerful, 
while he spoke to I lie pCOplfl only Of All appeal to Invisible, 

Justice, lie never was reduced Into political licentiousness 
while advocating religious liberty i but. on the contrary ever 
separated between the righti of conscience and the privileges 
of looiety between temporal and eternal relationship! - 
between the things of Csssar&nd of God with a discretion 
which ii is bard to overrate, 

lint though Luther was a prudent, and in some respects a 
gentle hearted, man even in public matters, lie was verily no 
half-hearted reformer no petty, hesitating, temporising one. 

lie was a stern, straightforward man in all essential aims: 

troubled with nodelioate doubts, no shuddering solicitudes, as 
!o the results of his own principles, lie never quailed at 
the realisation of his own Ideas: and he was not disheart- 
ened, though grieved, at I he association with his cause of 
persons who di(i not share his spirit, lie did not. renounce: 
his principles (as a conscientious second-rale man would have 
done) because to them Were attributed the War of the Pea- 
sants or the Fanaticism of the Anabaptists. lie knew that 

evil will everoling to the good, and even pull it down to the 
dust if it can hut raise Itself higher by standing on its rains. 

lie looked through and beyond all this; regarding it M a 
necessar\ though an uncomely part of a, whole which was or 
WOUld be lovely 1 ai tin' price at which all great blessings 
must be won on earth ; as a stage of crisis and suffering and 
spasmodic elVorf which would seem sometimes essential to 

restoration from desperate disease. And it surely should be 

judged that Luther was not so much responsible for men's 
abusing the Truth as they were who for so long had not 
taught them to use it aright. Hut generally speaking, there 
were no forcible permanent outbreaks among his followers 
while Luther lived: and this perhaps is a. considerable 

presumption of ins greatness and o( his kinglj faculth 

that lie ruled the storm which he raised. 



maktin LUTBER. 87 

in Luther, then, T see a man whose characteristics are 
Faith, and Energy, and Courage. His Faith was such as to 
entitle him to hold i station in any catalogue o( Christian 
men who should be recorded in continuation of the Apostolic 

chapter c( Hebrew Heroes. Of liis energy — his untiring 
Continuous industry- one can only say thai it was intense. 
There has Beldoni lived a man who has done more BOlid 
work in the world than Luther: ami it may be DSOSt truly 

said o( him. that whatever his head or his heart (ouud to do 
he did with both hands earnestly. 1 believe that there was 
not a year of his life, even the busiest, after his first publica- 
tion in which he did not publish more than one book: and 
Considering what a practical life he led it is much to say of 
him, that his writings are too voluminous for even the 

leisurely profitably to read. And o\ his courage what shall 

we say, it was so great? IVrhaps this, that it was \ ery far 
from being only or chiefly a physical result. No. it was in 
the greatest measure the product o( his Faith. He had a 
Faith that he could face Eternity with, and he felt at any 
instant prepared to meet his (Jon this I believe was the 
secret of Luther's strength; and verily this is an incalculable 
invincible inspiration for any man. laither felt too that he 
had armour which he had well proved before he put it on : 
armour for the right hand ami for the left : helmet and 
Shield and sword, all o( celestial temper: a QaUBC that must 
Conquer and a Hope that would not make him ashamed. 
And as in the greatest men. latther's courage ever rose with 
difficulty : he was the most collected in the hour of the 
greatest need. What paralysed others only tranquilised 
him. lie might grow excited by a Dispute, but he was only 
Calmed by a Battle. Love for all men and Pear o( none. 

this was his Motto: his Principle and his Practice. 

I do not know that laither was a man o( surpassing In- 
tellect. To be sure he could do, and do well, whatever he 



38 MARTIN LUTHER. 

tried, and he tried many things, and this is certainly a pre- 
sumption of more than ordinary ability ; but the determina- 
tion of Will was so remarkable in him, that it absorbed 
almost all his other qualities, and enabled him perhaps to do 
his work with less extraordinary talents than would other- 
wise have been necessary. But Luther had a good deal of 
Insight, whatever else he had not. He saw below the sur- 
face of a good many things about him, into their substance, 
or their hollowness : He was not deluded by mere Shows : 
he would take nothing in exchange for the Real. He saw 
that he was living in a land of the Shadow of Death, and 
yet there was a Land of better Promise underlying and 
around it : and this was no mean mental power. 

Luther's private character appears to have been irreproach- 
able. There is all the positive testimony one could wish as 
to this point, and Luther's never vindicating it, in his earliest 
writings, confirms us in our belief. Besides, Luther's chief 
friends were of the best men of the time, and his greatest ene- 
mies of the worst : and this speaks well for him. And what 
does so also is this, that the friends of his youth were the 
friends of his age. There was Nicholas Emler who used to 
carry him on his back to school, fifty years after receiving from 
him a book with a memorial of this written on its blank 
leaf. And there was John Reinecke — his schoolfellow both 
at Mansfeld and at Magdeburg — accompanying him to 
Worms, and loving him while he lived. There was Conrad 
Cottas' son his constant guest while at Wittemberg; John 
Lange his brother monk whom he made prior of Erfurth, 
and John Braun, his old Vicar at Eisenach, corresponding 
with him all their lives and his; and Melancthon, you 
know, and Justus Jonas, and Frederic the Elector, and 
Spalatin his Secretary, and a host of others, who knew him 
best loved him best. And indeed every record we have of 
him seems to tell us that he was an admirable genial man in 



MARTIN LUTHER. 39 

private — cordial, companionable — not austere, or hard : not 
tyrannising over his associates by a constant display of his 
superiority : but rather perhaps, on the contrary, sometimes 
too unbending, too mirthful, not sufficiently conventional. 
Rough, homely, sterling : solid, simple : playful, hospitable, 
fond of God's works and of music : a hearty, generous, kindly 
man : good humoured but choleric : such was he. Supersti- 
tious, but no braver man anywhere : believing in a personal 
visible Devil and yet defying him : and surely he who fights 
with what he believes to be Supernatural Evil must be so 
brave that one cannot say what there is that he would not 
fight against, if need ")e. A most kind father, a not unkind 
husband : a liberal, frank-hearted, forgiving man : one who 
cared nothing for money, and who would give to any one 
who asked him, and from him that would borrow of him would 
never turn away. And perhaps there never was a man 
whcwe sail has been equally laid bare before us in whom 
there could be traced so few of the baser qualities of our 
nature. He was not revengeful : he was not suspicious : 
he had no private enmities : no domestic infelicities. Plainly 
living, wanting little, no man ever troubled others or him- 
self with so few self-regarding thoughts, no man ever so 
calmly brushed away, as stinging insects, trifling troubles, 
or trampled with such elephantine foot upon the miserable 
minutiae of life. A man of high yet humble thoughts : with 
the least vanity, with no apparent jealousy. He ever 
sought out the ablest coadjutors and put them foremost. 
Indeed he often speaks of himself as only the forerunner of 
Melancthon : as cutting down the trees and clearing the 
ground for him to sow upon. Never perhaps did man do so 
much work with so little aid from those two great props 
which most men lean on mainly, Praise and Sympathy. 
No one thoroughly understood Luther while he lived : and 
he would never allow even his dearest friend to approve him 



40 MARTIN LUTHER. 

verbally. The consciousness of his calling and the lofty- 
conception of its duties made him dwell apart from Praise : 
indeed to one so earnest in the pursuit or the preaching of 
Truth, mere Praise was felt to be out of place, and nothing 
as satisfying but the discovery of it for himself and the recep- 
tion of it by others. He earnestly entreated, too, that what- 
ever those who held his opinions might call themselves after 
his death they would never call themselves (as they have 
done) after his name. No, Luther was not an ambitious 
man, in any worldly sense. To teach at Wittemberg and to 
die at Eisleben, was all the worldly good he sought. Nay, 
I should say, that he was a man one cannot conceive of as 
honoured by a title, or richer for an estate (a mark of a 
great man, this) : the seeking truth was his employment 
and the teaching it his reward. For twenty years he ruled 
over sovereigns — he had princes for his pupils and kings for 
his instruments — and yet he was never other in fact or in 
wish, than a plain-living, plain-speaking Priest. And 
surely for the world-famous Luther to die in the village in 
which he was bora much as he was born — while kindly 
setting to rights some matters for his liege-lord concerning 
those very mines about which his father worked — with 
scarcely enough money to pay for his funeral, had that 
funeral been a private one — there is something which even a 
heathen would have reverenced here. 

Was Luther, then, a perfect character ? No, a very im- 
perfect one. He was a sincere Christian, as I have already 
said : but he was not a mature one. He was given to see 
some truths and to attain to some virtues, in such degree as 
few others have been : but the completeness of the Christian 
character — its symmetry — certainly was not his. A good 
many fruits of the Spirit were wanting in him. Meekness, 
long-suffering, gentleness, these were not his : and without 
these a man cannot be a model man. Luther was an 



JIABTIN LUTHER. 41 

instrument fitted for his work, but not a Pattern for all time. 
He had, too, considerable mental weaknesses, as I think. His 
writings are not altogether Possessions for Posterity : they 
are truly straightforward and emphatically practical: but 
they for the most part aspire to only immediate usefulness, 
and they attain to little more than they aspire to. They are 
not consistent one with another; and they are not safe 
guides for this age, though they were the best for his own. 
Luther was not a patient man: and none but a patient 
man can be a good theologian. Wherever Luther goes 
beyond the plain letter of Scripture it appears to me 
that he goes astray : wherever he theorises he had better 
be silent, when he is betrayed into Philistine ground — that 
is, into Philosophical— he loses his strength, and becomes 
much as other men. The scientific intellect and philosophic 
temper did not shine out in him at all. He was an admir- 
able advocate, but the judicial faculty (which is the highest) 
was not his. His views of great questions have all that 
compactness and manageableness which is the consequence 
and the convenience of narrowness : but the significance of 
the Gospel as a Whole was not clear to him. The mysteries 
of the universe pressed but lightly upon him. He cut every 
knot. A rough, strong, practical grasp of things contented 
him. He had few scruples and no fears. He would dogma- 
tise more than he had need to do, and thus was obliged to 
accept consequences which he might have avoided. He saw 
some things far off vividly, and others close by, through 
eagerness, not at all. The shortest practicable way to a 
point he had in view, that he saw : and with his gigantic 
mode of striding, it little mattered what kind of ground lay 
between it and him : firm or fcoggy, turnpike or trespass, 
over it he would go, and went. Such an one I will not 
blame, but I dare not follow. 

As to Luther's moral faults — those unevennesses and 



42 MARTIN LUTHER. 

patches on his otherwise altogether noble statue — the principal 
were, violence of temper and intemperance of language. The 
only two distinct acts of his life which I think it necessary to 
mention as noteworthy in this way are, his advice to Philip, 
Landgrave of Hesse, and his marriage. Of the former it is 
something to be able to say that it is the only instance in 
his life which impresses itself upon me as one in which he 
seemed to compromise the claims of duty : and of the latter 
it may suffice to say, that it was a curious specimen of the 
Logic of Inclination, and an instructive instance of the over- 
bearing usurpation of the will over the judgment. Of 
Luther's impetuosity of language, however, something more 
may be said : for indeed you will not judge him rightly 
without you bear in mind that all this vehemence and 
violence of his, was not about himself in any way, but all 
about his Cause. Luther, too, was only thus impetuous in 
words : for I really remember no act of his public life which 
was unpardonably intemperate. I do not recollect any 
instance in which he did not render unto Caesar the things 
which are Caesar's, or to Society the things which are So- 
ciety's. He was no reckless revolutionary ruffian : but only 
a right-minded resolute reformer. He always behaved him- 
self sufficiently reverently to his ecclesiastical superiors, so 
long as he believed in their legitimacy, and never otherwise 
than with customary honour towards his social superiors. 
And then you must recollect that intemperance of language 
was the prevailing habit, and almost the necessity, of the 
times : for both the times and the language were then of 
the rudest : indeed scarcely could any state of civilized and 
nominally Christian society be of a rougher character than 
that amidst which Luther was bred. And then the perpe- 
tual presence of falsehood and iniquity and hypocrisy around 
him — in a degree far beyond anything which we have to 
compare with it — stung into a more than modern impatience 



MARTIN LUTHER. 43 

a spirit which was gifted with the keenest love of Justice 
and the deepest hatred of Imposture. And then again, he 
was thus in a great measure on principle : He thought he 
had sanction for it in Elijah and John the Baptist, and many- 
prophets and righteous men of old time : And he used to 
say, that he found that when he spoke smoothly he was 
admired and forgotten, but that when he spoke roughly he 
was hated and remembered : and he thought that, on the 
whole, the latter was the better. And perhaps after all with 
his mission, and especially with his own notion of his mis- 
sion, he could hardly have done much otherwise. It was 
that of a Boanerges rather than of a Barnabas : and there- 
fore if he came in the spirit of Elias rather than in that 
of the Beloved Disciple we must bear in mind that his lot 
lay amid false prophets and idol altars ; and that his work 
was emphatically to pull down and to destroy — to rebuke 
Ahabs and to abolish Baalists. He therefore thought that 
he must be a rough man and a rude one : clothed in no 
courtier robe, and using no courtier phrase. He seems to 
have deemed his soul always among lions : and that the 
only way in which he could keep them from devouring him 
was by shouting at them. He was no performer on the 
harp or lute for the entertainment of those who dwelt in 
king's houses : his mission was to Awake a Nation, and that 
too with a trumpet which should give no uncertain sound. 
The first requisite for a voice which shall command in a 
Storm is, that it shall be heard : the second only or the 
third, that it shall be musical. And a man who is strug- 
gling for a hearing, and sometimes for life itself, with loud 
and fierce multitudes — who must perish if he is not listened 
to, and who cannot prosper if he does not terrify or per- 
suade — such an one of all men surely must not be made an 
offender for a word. 

And the fact is that Luther was throughout a rude, large, 



44 ilAETIN LUTHER. 

ponderous man : with no delicacy of any sense, with no 
fineness of nerve : a born wrestler : a man of war from his 
youth : over-violent, but unweariable : a passionately toiling 
man, but awkward, and with no skill of any kind, so that 
his chief chance of annihilating opposition lay merely in the 
weight and directness of his blows. Strength even to giant- 
hood was his : and he had a giant's work to do in his 
unceasing struggle with Popes and Potentates and Princi- 
palities and Powers : and he did it like a Giant — though 
not like a Tyrant. No : Luther's bravery was not mere 
savagery, instinctive and uudiscrinninating : it was a calm, 
contemplative, sustained warfare of Mind against Force : a 
wrestling with all Falsehood and Injustice after having 
counted the cost and resolved to accept the consequence. 
He believed that powerful as they seemed, being Legion, yet 
that they were conquerable by the Right, doomed to die by 
the Truth. And for his liberty of speech, or any excess of 
his zeal, he was willing to pay with his Life : an arrange- 
ment which if wrong is not so seductive as to be likely to be 
dangerous. Had Luther been in power and thus treated a 
minority, the case would have been different : but for one 
who was as little indebted as is conceivable for any gift to 
any man — for one whom no man flattered and almost all 
men hated — for one who stood alone against myriads — for 
him to be over-bold is perhaps the least crime he could com- 
mit. And besides, Luther did not shrink from the endurance 
of any kind of pain himself, and he was thus less sensitive 
about the feelings of others : nay he did not think Pain the 
greatest evil, nor Peace the greatest duty of man. And 
indeed to live peaceably with all men is not the whole duty 
of man : nor the first : nor any duty at all, when it is not 
possible save on unconscientious conditions. To be at one 
with God and with our own consciences, this is the main 
thing : and this may often be accomplished only through 
severe and lifelong struggle. 



MARTIN LUTHER. 45 

And then again, when you see that Luther was not free 
from great blemishes both in his animal and in his spiritual 
nature, you should always remember who he was and how 
he was bred, both ways. Physically, he came of no gentle 
race : the son of a German peasant in the fifteenth century 
— a miner amid the hills of Saxony: poor, very poor, in 
youth : a wild hardy boy, running at large when not in 
school: with no companions but the rudest: brought up to 
no patrimony or art but that of self-help : making his way 
in the world through the throng of his fellows by the strength 
of his own right arm. And spiritually what was he ? 
For long years a monk : tied and bound with the chain of 
profitless forms ; persecuted and worn : blinded and ban- 
daged : and surely therefore if he bad not lost all roughness 
nor acquired all polish, there need be no wonder and no 
reproach. The imperfect vision and unsteady gait of eyes 
long excluded from the light and of limbs long debarred from 
exercise may appear uncouth to us who have been born in 
light and exercised daily from our youth ; but surely he who 
first bursts such bonds asunder and then sets so many of his 
fellow prisoners free, may be pardoned some uncouthness 
of manner, some irregularity of procedure. That Luther 
struggled at all out of the rubbish of the massive ruins of 
the Church of Rome — this alone is a presumption of his 
possessing a strength all but superhuman : His coming 
forth all bruised and maimed is a proof of nothing more than 
of the weakness of the flesh and the hardness of the 
strucrde. 

On the whole then, though distinctly bearing in mind his 
faults, I repeat that Luther was a genuine Great Man — aye, 
one of the greatest that God has sent upon earth in these 
latter days. To stand at first alone in his generation 
preaching Truth, and then gradually in despite of all ana- 
thema and opposition to make a Nation his disciples: to 



4:6 MARTIN LUTHER. 

commence in a minority of One, and then to gain over whole 
kingdoms to his side : and to do all this at the hazard of his 
life and with the mere sword of his mouth — this is a great 
man's deed, and this is Luther's. For the miner's son of 
Mansfeld to raise himself to be the Friend and Companion 
of Sovereigns — for the singing-boy of Eisenach to become 
the most conspicuous man in Europe — for the monk of 
Erfurth to have wrestled foot to foot with Three Popes — for 
the mere Doctor of Wittemberg to have stood his ground 
against the greatest of all Emperors — nay for the Excom- 
municated man merely to have kept alive for twenty years 
—this was no mean doing. Not to fall down before the 
Golden Image which had been set up and upheld by many a 
spiritual Nebuchadnezzar, but to be willing rather to be cast 
into the burning fiery furnace — surely here alone are the 
elements of greatness : but to think of turning Iconoclast of 
such magnitude as to smite to pieces this Monster Image — 
and that in the face of adoring multitudes of all nations and 
kindreds and languages — and to attempt it, and to succeed — ■ 
there is what I mean by Heroism here. 

I now dismiss you with simply saying that we all have 
the same kind of mission as Luther had and the same means 
of fulfilling it — the same kind of work and the same kind of 
tools. It is the duty of us all to bear witness to what we 
believe to be Truth and to fight against what we believe to 
be Error. And to do this, we must have Luther's chief 
characteristics : We must be, as he was, honest and earnest, 
manly and brotherly ; having illimitable faith and inflexible 
decision; sincerity, largeness of heart, fervour; fearing God 
and none besides. 



CHRISTOPHEK COLUMBUS. 



The Bible is not the only Revelation of God. God is 
everywhere, and everywhere there are traces of His Presence 
— impressions of His Mind — manifestations of His Will. 
Every work of God is a partial exhibition of Himself. The 
laws of Nature are the laws of God : the instincts of 
Humanity are the commands of God. All things visible 
and invisible which we are conscious of as Realities, are 
ordinances of God. Nothing is but what He has created 
in essence after the counsel of His own will. Every 
indisputable relation — every universal impulse — is an ex- 
ponent of an Idea of God. Yea, all Creation is a Revela- 
tion of the Creator. And thus as our Lord Jesus Christ 
has told us, the lilies of the field and the birds of the air — 
the rising of the sun and the falling of the rain equally upon 
the just and the unjust — the parental emotions and the 
social sympathies — are all to be recognised as intimations of 
the Mind of God. And if these things be so, so also it may 
be suggested is the History of Man a Revelation of the 
Purposes of God. It is indeed one far more difficult to 
interpret than all others, and far less important to under- 
stand : one which most of you here are not called upon or 



48 CHRISTOPHER COLU5IBUS. 

enabled to study, and therefore one which you will be no 
great losers if you do not comprehend : but still for those 
few of you who have the ability, there would seem the 
obligation to study it: and as I am going to take up our 
time this evening with a story which has been familiar 
to some from childhood, I would beg permission of the 
majority to say a few words first addressed exclusively to 
the Few. And I do so because I believe that no one can 
form right judgments of the significance of man's destiny 
or duties — or adequately even appreciate the characters of 
such Great Men as will from time to time be brought before 
you at these Meetings — without endeavouring to borrow 
light from a wider field of vision than is contained within 
the boundary lines of that special Revelation of God which 
is written with pen and with ink. Truly all that relates to 
the discharge of our own personal every-day duties, and to 
the understanding of our own individual responsibilities as 
members of the Church of Christ — we may attain to with 
no other knowledge or thoughtfulness but about the instincts 
and experience of our own nature, and the ordinary Worship 
and Teaching of the Church. But would we attempt to be 
something wiser than this (and those few of us here who 
have so much leisure may perhaps lawfully do this) would 
we try to understand and sympathise with the position and 
the interests of other portions of God's great Human Family 
— then, I say, I feel sure that we must take into' our con- 
sideration very much more than these things : we must add 
to the History of the Jews all authentic History of the 
World, and to the great Facts of the Catholic Creed the 
great Facts also of Nature and Experience. And as I have 
to speak to you this evening of the story of a man who 
was permitted to do so very much to alter and enlarge 
our views of the world in which we live, such suggestions, 
if true, cannot be inappropriate. Believing then as I 



CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS. 49 

do that the whole history of the world is under the per- 
petual providence of God — that nothing ever takes place 
in it anywhere but what is foreknown and provided for by 
a Wisdom and a Love equally Infinite — I would say, that 
at least all those great Discoveries in the world's history 
which have signally and indisputably worked together for 
its good must have been intended and brought about by in- 
fluences which, though working through the instrumentality 
of existing and inflexible laws, may by us be not erroneously 
regarded as specially Divine. For instances, I would say, 
the Invention of the Compass, and the consequent rapid 
achievements of navigation under Columbus and De Gama : 
the Invention of the Telescope, and the consequent recognition 
of the Law of Gravitation as the true solution of the motions 
of the Planetary System, by Galileo, Kepler, and Newton : 
the Invention of Printing, and the consequent restoration of 
learning and promulgation of lost Truth in the sixteenth 
century : the Invention of the application of Steam to loco- 
motion and manufacture, and the consequent sudden exten- 
sion of intercourse and civilization between the most important 
centres of human habitation ; and many other remarkable 
and influential developments of human power and know- 
ledge ; I would call these, kinds of Inspiration ; Providential 
leadings ; Godsends. As we believe that the sole centre of 
Power is in God, and that none of us has anything which 
we have not received, surely we are compelled also to believe 
that all the new power which is generated in the world must 
have been from the first intended to be thus from time to 
time so developed as to be a co-operating and modifying 
influence in the history and destiny of the world. Nay, all 
that are called Revolutions, and Reformations, and Revivals, 
whether political, ecclesiastical, or literary, I believe to have 
been all contemplated and ordained to be such instruments 
towards the world's progression as they have been, by the 

D 



50 CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS. 

perpetually pervading providence of God. Surely this is the 
only view which a religious man can thoughtfully content 
himself with. For are not the minds of all men effluences 
from God ? are they not what they are in faculty through 
His creative power? and is not that His whereon and 
wherewith they work? If so, then since He from time to 
time sends on earth the minds which effect the great changes 
in it, by making to us great discoveries or otherwise, all 
human history must be in a very considerable degree under 
direct influence from God, though visibly it seem working 
only according to inflexible Law. The law is inflexible, 
indeed, but the material on which the law works, if we may 
so speak, is perpetually fresh and variable ; and thus there 
is a continual inseparable commingling of ordinary and 
extraordinary, unchangeable and miraculous, in human his- 
tory. Men surely are not altogether the fac-similes of their 
forefathers or the products of circumstances ; there is a cer- 
tain portion of fresh divine life in each ; and the degree of 
this is the measure of what I would call special divine inter- 
ference. The world conceivably could have gone on longer than 
it did without the appearing in it of Luther or Columbus, of 
Galileo or of Newton : and who could bid them be what they 
were, but God only ? Truly Chance or Circumstance is the 
Creator of nothing, and this world is governed no otherwise 
than emphatically and universally by God. Thus all influ- 
ences which tend towards the improvement of our race I 
consider as gifts from our Father which is in heaven. What 
we call Great Men, Great Epochs, seem to me the more 
considerable parts of a great scheme for the progressive 
Kevelation of God's Purposes, by which men may continually 
be taught more and more of their true relations to Himself 
and to each other — their true position in the Universe. And 
when one sees, too, the remarkable way in which great Facts 
have been revealed, and great Truths have taken hold of the 



CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS. 51 

minds of men — how the fluctuations of thought and feeling 
among men seem to indicate their obedience to some external 
law, though we know not what — a law which secures pro- 
gression by ebb as well as by flow, by that seeming retro- 
gression which equally as progress is implied in oscillation 
and revolution — one cannot but be additionally confirmed in 
the conviction, that the history of man is under the guidance 
and the governance of a Providence which, though far above 
out of our sight, is yet perpetually contemplating us for good. 
For myself, I cannot help believing that God sends into the 
world, every now and then, a spiritual epidemic, as it were, 
as He does a physical one — this for blessing as that for chas- 
tisement — and those minds on which it takes hold the most 
thoroughly become the half-inspired Seers and Prophets of 
these later generations of mankind. That which was abroad 
in Columbus's time and country was an impulse towards 
Geographical Discovery : what that is which is abroad now 
and in our own country, I shall leave to others to determine : 
and content myself with remarking, that it would be the 
wisest course for those of us who have the leisure to frame 
any general opinions about the probable destiny of our 
Country or our Church — or, what may be more interesting 
than either, about the Evangelical Progression of Mankind — 
to look well at History as a Revelation of God's purposes, 
and to modify their anticipations by a careful consideration 
of all attainable phenomena both of the Present and the 
Past. 

And now that you have indulged me by patient acquies- 
cence in what I fear must be to all but a few an altogether 
unintelligible utterance, I will proceed to tell you a story 
which throughout is as simple as it is interesting to all. 

While Luther was in the monastery of Erfurth there was 
dying at Valladolid in Spain a most notable old man. He 
was a veteran admiral of Spain — not long returned from the 



52 CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS. 

last voyage he ever was to make, broken equally in health 
and in spirits. And the day before he died, having just 
signed his last Will and Testament, he was talking, as inter- 
vals of ease permitted, of the story of his life to his sons and 
a few others who had gathered around his chair. Propped 
up and sadly suffering from complicated infirmities — looking 
much older than he was, but with apparently much vigour in 
him yet — he was uttering words which, to one who should 
have heard of him only for the first time then, would have 
seemed strange indeed. For he spoke of little else but of 
another world — not a world in the Invisible whither he was 
soon to go — but of a New World on this earth of ours where 
he had been : a world which he had been the first to see ; 
a world which should be associated for ever with his name, 
and which should be for all coming ages an inexhaustible 
field for enterprise, and benevolence, and wealth. It was a 
strange scene altogether : the very room he was in looked 
like none other: it was hung round with the strangest 
things : Besides pictures of places and of ships, old charts, 
maps innumerable, and all ordinary naval things, there were 
the strangest looking ornaments and weapons of all kinds : 
dried plants and skins of animals such as no one had ever 
seen before : live birds and lumps of gold ; a tattered flag of 
Spain: and most unaccountable of all, you might see a 
withered branch of thorn with berries on it, a small board 
decayed, a rudely carved stick, and right over his chair, 
Chains. And as for the man himself, he was no ordinary 
looking, no ordinary speaking man. There was a natural 
nobility about him which would have made you say to 
yourself, whether that man has a patent of nobility from 
his king or not, at least be has had one given him by 
God. His face indeed is weatherbeaten and coarse, and 
he is altogether crippled by disease: yet that look, there 
is no mistaking it : there is more than common there : there 



CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS. 53 

is God-given strength of mind and loftiness of heart : instinct 
of greatness and incompatibility with littleness of any kind. 
And he is almost like an old Prophet to listen to : so full is 
he of enthusiasm and wild fervour, under those long thick 
curling white hairs of his. But he evidently has been no 
mere Preacher: he has done something, aye much: that 
rough scarred face, those hard hands, those sinewy limbs, 
all tell of Work. He speaks with mingled querulousness 
and pride : calling up sometimes saddest remembrances, but 
oftenest as if beholding even with his bodily eye, glowing 
visions of the future. His story seemed a strange one : 
altogether unintelligible to one who did not know who it was 
that was speaking: to one who does, not altogether clear. 
But let us listen a little to what he is saying : He speaks in 
Spanish, but with foreign accent: with long references to 
family affairs (which we must omit) and in broken sentence?, 
just as his pains will allow. Something of what he is say- 
ing — though very little of the manner in which he says it — 
may be translated thus : 

Mine has been a strange life, my sons : every way won- 
derful: God has ordered it throughout: He has scarcely 
done more for Moses, or for David, than for me. He has 
delivered me the keys of the gates of the ocean sea, hitherto 
from the foundation of the world barred as it were with 
mighty chains : he has made my name to resound marvel- 
lously through the world : he has given me honourable fame 
in His Church. Wonderful, Wonderful ! This too, suddenly 
at the close of life — when I was nearly threescore — He en- 
abled me to acquire ; but I am sure He was preparing me for 
it all along. For from a boy I was given to the sea: nothing 
used to please me so much when a very child as ships 
and ship-tackle of all kinds : old charts and maps were my 
picture-books : my toys all smelt of the sea : and living as 
my fath^ did then by the seaside at Genoa, I was always on 



54 CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS. 

the water, whilst he worthy man (long since in heaven) 
thought little hut of the price of wool, and the wages of 
weavers, and how his guild of wool-comhers prospered. He 
gave me but little scholarship : most of what I got while a 
boy was on board ship : a little Latin, indeed, I got at Pavia, 
and a little geography, and geometry, and astrology : but I 
was not long enough there to get much : my longing to be on 
the sea I recollect was so irrepressible that I was impatient 
of anything else, and to sea I went as soon as any one 
would take me. And now that I look back upon my whole 
history and think of this deep longing of my boyhood, and 
how it abides with me now, and is sometimes so strong in 
me as to make me almost regret (God forgive me) that it is 
written that In the new earth there shall be no more Sea — 
I say, I cannot think of this my unutterable longing for the 
sea, even as a child, without tracing in it the special Inspi- 
ration of the Almighty. Indeed all throughout my life I feel 
that I have been acted upon by impulses from Him : I have 
been but an instrument of His, in doing what I have done, 
(to His name be all the glory) : and do you, my children, 
keep this ever in your hearts as a great truth — that to be a 
conscious and willing instrument in the hands of God for ac- 
complishing any of His purposes is the noblest lot of man. 
This conviction — nay this consciousness — that I have had a 
mission from God to do the work in the world I have done, 
this has been that which has all along upheld me under my 
difficulties and my sore sore distresses : this has already 
given me strength above other men to bear afflictions above 
other men's (I hope I say it humbly — but look at those 
Chains as well as these Charts) : And now when perhaps 
just about to set out on a voyage quite different from any I 
have been on yet, this also gives me good hope that God 
(having pardoned my sins through the virtue of that Cross 
which I have planted in new lands) He will not desert one 



CHKISTOPHER COLUMBUS. 55 

whom He has gifted with the heart to trust Him and love 
Him and live for Him. When I first went to sea, indeed, I 
had no such thoughts about my calling as I have now : I 
was for years afterwards even a thoughtless lad living much 
such a life as other seafaring people : mindful of nothing but 
of service : reckless, hardy, rough : only miserable when on 
shore, never so happy as when there was most to do. But 
very well do I remember at this moment — though now it is 
a half-century ago — when news first got among our crews 
about some Discoveries which had been just made along the 
Coast of Africa. Many of us were all astir about them : I 
wanted much to be at such service as that : but that was not 
the kind of service we had to do : this was a kind of half- 
merchant, half-war duty: for though we were but traders, 
every little voyage was a kind of war-cruise : we had to 
fight our way from port to port, for the Mediterranean in 
those days swarmed with pirates. But still there was 
nothing to be done worth doing even in this way : and even 
when I got a commission in the fleet of the King of Naples, 
it was scarcely much better : It only increased without 
satisfying my sea-faring longings : and so I left it for the 
Portuguese service, hoping that I might get sent on some of 
their voyages of Discovery. I did, as you know, go on some 
uncommon cruises on the Guinea Coast and beyond the 
Thule of Ptolemy (Iceland) : but this was not enough for me : 
for I was even then full of the scheme which I last tried, of 
finding a Western Route to India — I am sure there is one — 
and indeed I wrote to Paulo Toscanelli about it, and he was 
so good as to send me a map he had drawn (after Marco 
Polo's book) with Cathay and Cipango marked down where 
I never could find them, but near where I to this day be- 
lieve that some one will find them : some one, do I say ? 
nay, if ever I get round again I will have another cruise after 
them myself, for there lie, believe me, my sons, the kingdom 



56 CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS. 

\ 

of the Great Khan, and all the unimaginable treasures and 
glories of this world. And a glorious thing I thought 
it then, and a glorious thing I think it now, to carry 
the Cross into the presence of the Khan, to bring his 
innumerable people under the dominion of the Church, 
and to open a communication between Europe and its 
civilised Antipodes. I have tried it indeed already, and 
failed: but I was near it, and if God would put new 
strength into these old limbs nothing should keep me from 
trying it again. But it is not likely now — how I talk ! — 
God's will be done ! But I feel the same fervour now that 
I did at that glorious season of my life when the Idea 
of the New World dawned upon me : when I was given to 
see as with the distinctness of bodily vision the existence of 
another Hemisphere: and when I was awakened to the 
consciousness that God had elected me out of all men to 
reveal to my brethren a full half of His terrestrial creation. 
Oh ! that was a stirring time with me. The moment when 
the persuasion took possession of me that there was Land 
West, was almost as exciting as that other time when I first 
saw it with these eyes. It did not indeed come upon me in 
its fullness all of a sudden : it grew upon me, in one sense ; 
it enlarged itself, though it did not change in form, for some 
eighteen years. I had read of it in ancient books : I had 
heard strange reports of it from sailors, especially from your 
grandfather: it was suggested to me faintly by what I 
myself had seen. All these things indeed did not tell me 
anything plainly : but they set me athinking : athinking not 
only about the credibility of man's evidence, but about what 
evidence there was in the constitution of the earth itself 
which would render antipodes probable. I then went on 
from thinking what might be, to thinking what must be: 
and the idea of what the world was, and how it was, came 
into my mind, and from that moment I Saw another world : 



CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS. 57 

It was no use arguing with me, no use scoffing at me : God 
had made me another Daniel; able to tell men both the 
Dream and the Interpretation thereof. And from that day 
to this I never had a doubt : nay, my faith grew every day 
more strong : the glorious prophecies of the Bible seemed to 
point out to me that the uttermost ends of the earth were to 
receive through my means the knowledge of the Faith : 
and here has been to me a steady bright light which has led 
me on, and in leading guided me, in all my voyages. And 
though it has not pleased God — whose I am and whom I 
serve — to make more use of me than as an instrument to 
show men just where to look for new revelations of His 
works, yet I feel sure that there are not only Islands in- 
numerable in the West more than eye has yet seen, but 
that there is Terra Firma there, a Continent, a World. 
And may be I shall yet — but no : it would be too great an 
honour for any one man : I will not think of it : I will be 
thankful for the Past. Only remember my vow : The Holy 
Sepulchre, the Holy Sepulchre — think of that. You promise 
me you will, my sons? — Well then, Lord, now lettest Thou 
Thy servant depart in peace. 

But you must not listen more to the fervent but querulous 
old man, for you should not understand him : I must trans- 
port you to quite a different scene from this old man's dying 
chamber — many years back — twenty. 

At the gate of the Franciscan Convent of La Rabida, 
just above Palos in Andalusia, in the autumn of 1486 stands 
a stranger — a foreigner — a sailor — begging bread and water 
for a little boy whom he is leading in his hand. A noble 
looking man is he : of lofty bearing yet poorly dressed : with 
small liquid eyes enkindling in speech : not old but with 
hair already white. Wayworn and careworn he looks, all 
dusty and threadbare, his boy hungry and footsore : altoge- 
ther pitiable and remarkable : This is he who afterwards 



58 CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS. 

became The Admiral of Spain — that old man whom we 
have been listening to — Christopher Columbus. And his 
standing thus begging alms is a necessary means to his 
becoming such. For as he is eating and resting the Prior 
of the convent comes up and enters into conversation with 
him, and asks news of him : he converses, but seems to 
know little of any news the Prior wants to know. All his 
talk is of the Sea and of what is beyond it. The Prior is 
struck with the strangeness and fervour of this foreign 
wayfarer; how much his talk is above his dress, and yet 
how the bearing and look of the man are so in keeping with 
his talk. And so he suspects that he is entertaining 
a great man unawares : he therefore further presses him 
to be his guest : and his suspicions becoming stronger 
every hour, he sends for the most intelligent man of 
the neighbourhood (a physician of Palos) to meet him. 
He comes ; they sup : the prior and the physician draw 
out the stranger into prolonged talk, who gradually un- 
folds to them the wildest seeming, yet not foolish, pro- 
ject — a project which he has for seeking a New "World in 
the "West. Hour after hour wears away while this man 
talks — talks, did I say? rather reasons, discourses, pleads. 
They listen delighted and amazed: for the rough mariner 
blends his enthusiasm most uncommonly with science, and 
with learning, and with piety. The mystic symbols of Bible 
prophecy, and the traditionary legends of classic history, are 
to him as household words. He speaks of Isaiah and Eze- 
kicl — of Aristotle and Seneca — and of himself as connected 
with them all. He tells them the story of his life : and how 
this idea of his with regard to a New "World is no new thing 
with him : but that he had long cherished it, and submitted 
his schemes to John the Second of Portugal — and how his 
advisers acted upon his plans, but wished to rob him of his 
fame : and how he had indignantly refused to listen to terms 



CHKISTOPHER COLUMBUS. 59 

which they were now willing to propose, in order that he 
might offer his service to a worthier master, and work for 
worthier wages. His earnestness is intense, and withal his 
intellect is clear : and so every hour he talks they think him 
less and less of an Enthusiast and more and more of a Seer. 
The Prior offers him an introduction at Court : and to take 
care of his boy at the convent, if he would like to go and try 
to get his scheme laid before the Sovereigns — Ferdinand and 
Isabella. He accepts the offer, and sets out. The Queen's 
Confessor — to whom his introduction was addressed — is 
unfriendly to his plans : and he has to wait about court, liv- 
ing as he can, for many weary months. The Grand Cardinal 
of Spain, however, takes up his cause, and procures him an 
audience of the Sovereigns, who issue a summons for a 
council of learned men to judge of his scheme ; and after 
many delays Columbus appears before this Council at Sala- 
manca. A strange scene is it. The old hall of the Domi- 
nican Convent there was fitted up for the conference : as 
judges, were assembled there the Professors of the Univer- 
sity, many a learned Bishop and dignitary of the Church, 
and the friars of St Stephen's, with all those outward appli- 
ances of pomp and form which are calculated to impose, if 
not to impress. Before them stands an obscure navigator — 
with no force to bring to bear upon anybody but that which 
an Idea gives a man — and unfolds his scheme and his rea- 
sons for it. His speech is only half listened to — not at all 
answered. He is replied to with passages from the Bible 
and passages from the Fathers, and the all-silencing in- 
sinuation that after so many philosophers had occupied them- 
selves with scientific investigations, and so many able 
navigators had been voyaging about the world for ages, it 
was unpardonable presumption for an unknown Italian to 
put forward pretensions which surpassed them all. Columbus 
demolished their reasonings, but he could not demolish their 



60 CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS. 

prejudices ; he refutes their philosophy, and overwhelms their 
scripture arguments by counter-quotations from the mag- 
nificent predictions of the prophets. His rough eloquence, 
scientific insight, and deep religious feeling, brought over the 
more noble-minded of his judges, but the majority of them 
remained unmoved. The conference is adjourned : from time 
to time during five years the council is re-assembled. During 
this interval of wearing suspense Columbus follows the court. 
He is very poor : living sometimes on grants from the king, 
and sometimes as he used to do in his younger days when 
ashore, by copying maps and charts. It is a time of war ; 
and Columbus, more for something to do perhaps than any- 
thing else and to beguile his waiting, is content to be sent 
as need might be on the service of the Sovereigns. And so 
with threadbare cloak but proud step, he hovers about the 
court, wild-looking, yet withal sad and solemn; exciting 
every one's marvel by his mingled poverty and pride ; by his 
idleness when there is no fighting going on, and his activity 
when there is : just bursting out into energy when the king 
needs his service, and sinking into all but apathy when that 
service is over. A strange, unintelligible, visionary man; 
noble in bearing, earnest in speech; not a soldier, yet fight- 
ing; having no appointment at court, and yet there with the 
sanction of the king : the wonder, without being the scoff of 
the noble ; pointed at with significant signs by the children in 
the street, yet loved by them — does this Columbus attend the 
migrations of the Court of Spain from palace to camp, from 
festival to war. But his patience has a limit, and in the 
winter of Ninety-one he presses for a determination of his 
cause: and the Council gives it against him, pronouncing 
his scheme to be vain, anti-scriptural, and impracticable. 
Columbus's attendance about the court is now over, and he 
leaves it, seeking patronage elsewhere. He tries some of 
the Spanish Grandees : receives favourable letters from the 



CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS. 61 

kings of England and of France. Besides Portugal, he had 
already tried Genoa and perhaps Venice : strange is it not, 
that he had thus to go about from country to country, for so 
many years, offering to princes the Discovery of a World ! 
But so it was : and now he is on his way back to La 
Rabida — to call for his son — on his way to France. When 
he reaches the convent, and recounts to the kind Prior his 
story since they last had met — and how his convictions of the 
truth of his schemes instead of diminishing only grow upon 
him, and how he is going to France — the Prior writes, and 
also goes himself, to the Queen and urges Columbus's suit. 
The Queen is won over, and she orders Columbus to appear 
again before her. He returns to court and finds the Sove- 
reigns engaged in the siege of Granada. And so there again 
you might see this unintelligible, mysterious-looking, idle, 
threadbare Italian wandering about the camp, a privileged 
man, but with no duties; amidst all its pomp and bustle 
thoughtful and abstracted, apparently taking interest in little 
that is going on ; talking if at all on matters of the war, 
about a scheme for carrying the war into the enemies' land, 
and of marching to Palestine to wrest from them the posses- 
sion of the Holy Sepulchre. He seems always looking into 
the Future, and save when this scheme was connected with 
it, he speaks with little interest about the mere driving out 
the Moors : even at the conquest of Granada, gazing with 
dry eye on the pageantry of that proud day when the 
Moors marched out of Spain, and the Cross was once again, 
after an interval of eight hundred years, planted upon its 
royal towers. The blast of War and the shout of Victory 
are over, and in the silence which succeeds the Prophet of 
the New World gains a hearing. The Sovereigns listen and 
assent. He seems now, then, on the very point of being 
enabled to attempt the realization of his long-cherished 
absorbing scheme. But no : this poor Italian, I told you, 



62 CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS. 

was as proud as he was poor — and this pride of his (or call 
it rather consciousness of superiority) made him treat with 
Sovereigns as one who had something to bestow which they 
must gratefully, or at least graciously, accept — something 
within him to which they were as much bound to do homage 
as he was to their official dignity and station. He felt that 
he also was in his way Royal ; that Honour was his due 
too; and that perchance his commission from God was as 
dignified as a King's. At least he could treat only on terms 
which would recognise the dignity of his enterprise : and so 
he demands, if he should succeed, the perpetual title of Ad- 
miral and Viceroy of all the seas and lands he should dis- 
cover, and a tenth of the profits ; or one-eighth of the profits 
if he should bear one-eighth of the expense. These 
demands are refused : not one jot will he abate : and so he 
leaves the presence of the Sovereigns with the intention of 
quitting Spain for France, as before. The cause of Colum- 
bus is again pleaded before the Queen, and the advantages 
and glories which would arise to the Gospel and the Church 
are vividly pictured : Her princely soul is all warmed with 
the thought of the probable conquests of the Cross, and she 
at once enters into Columbus's cause with enthusiasm, and 
even offers to pledge her jewels for the cost. All is now 
changed. Columbus is recalled, and there in that proud 
city of Granada, while the flush of victory is yet fresh, do 
the Sovereigns of Arragon and Castile sign the stipulations 
of a treaty which secured to their crown at once the Dis- 
covery and the Dominion of a "World. 

Columbus is now a Freeman : free to act, free to prove 
what is in him : with a clear stage and room every way ; 
having no outward hindrances, but with full liberty to do 
what he can: to realize his idea. AYhat he can, and 
whether his idea was a reality or a phantasy merely, we are 
now to see. Is the unlearned Mariner wiser than all the 



CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS. 63 

Doctors of Salamanca 1 Is the dreamy Adventurer a vision- 
ary or a seer % Is Columbus a Madman or a Great Man ? 
this is the question. 

Columbus has orders to fit out two small ships at that very 
Palos, near which I told you the convent of La Rabida was. 
He returns to be the Prior's guest, with feelings marvel- 
lously different from those which he had when he first 
enjoyed his hospitality. He finds however the greatest 
difficulty in getting crews. No one will serve with him 
willingly : all think his attempt nothing less than madness 
— a desperate crusade with no probable issue but death. 
But all difficulties are overcome by his zeal: and after 
taking a solemn sacramental leave of Spain, he goes on 
board. And thus with three small ships (called caravels) of 
about fifty or seventy tons burden — something like our river 
or coasting craft, with no deck to two of them — crazy, 
leaky, scarce seaworthy : with a crew of only a hundred and 
twenty, pressed men most of them, all hating the service: 
did Columbus set sail from the port of Palos, amid the sullen 
murmurs and burning tears of its people. That memorable 
day was Friday, 3d of August, 1492. 

On the 9th of September they lose sight of Ferro — the last 
of the Canary Islands — the last known point of land. Here 
begins the trial of Columbus's Faith — here too the unques- 
tionable evidence of his Greatness. Just think for a 
moment what the peculiarity of his daring and his difficulty 
was. To venture into an ocean without any known shore : 
to go on and on away from land with nothing but Faith in 
an Idea to lure him on ; to risk the lives of a hundred and 
twenty men and his own on that which he believed merely, 
and which he was the only man in the world who did 
believe, and which the learnedest and most reverend men of 
his day had solemnly pronounced, after seven years' deli- 
beration, absurd and impracticable and even impious : I say 



64 CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS. 

this is no mean doing. It was as great an example of the 
force which there is in an Idea, and of the power which 
there is in Faith, as one can well produce. His main diffi- 
culty was simply to keep alive long enough : long enough to 
give himself the opportunity of ascertaining what the world 
was made of : how large it was, and of what shape it was. 
To keep his crew from turning back as soon as half their 
provisions should he expended, this was a main point with 
him. At the very outset — four days only after they lost 
sight of land — he begins to meet with difficulties of this 
kind. The needle is found to vary five or six degrees N.W. 
— a mysterious proceeding on its part, which neither Colum- 
bus nor ourselves can account for. The crew tremble. 
Imaginative old legends had painted in the most vivid 
colours, all kinds of imaginable and unimaginable horrors as 
connected with these seas; and here seems to be a con- 
firmation of some of them, inasmuch as the very Laws of 
Nature seem changing. They soon, however, discover 
birds, which gives them hope of land : but as it could not 
be the land he was looking for, Columbus would not give in 
to the men's wishes to cruise after it. The one object — the 
fixed unalterable aim — Columbus had, was to sail "Westward 
— to go on and on and on till he came to what he believed 
in — Land ahead. The crew murmur. He keeps two reckon- 
ings, the true one for his own guidance, the other reducing 
the distance they sailed daily. On the 1st of October, by 
the true reckoning, they had come 2000 miles at least from 
Ferro. Still, still, his sole word to the helmsman is, West. 
The crew mutiny. Columbus is firm, and they are quiet 
again. And indeed this conduct of the crew is in no way 
to be wondered at, hardly to be blamed. I daresay it 
is much what we should have done : for it is what is very 
natural for ordinary men to do : and well brings out before 
us the peculiar greatness of Columbus. The crew did not 



CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS. 65 

understand Columbus : they thought him at least half-mad 
— they would have thought him altogether so but somehow 
they could not, he was such a calm man : though his eye 
was so wild his head was so clear: he could do such things: 
he knew so much more than they did : he was such an 
uncommonly good seaman. But still theirs was a fearful 
lot. To be out there, no one of them could tell where, nor 
for what : in the craziest, miserablest, deckless craft : with 
bad food daily growing worse and scantier, return growing 
daily less practicable : to be out there day after day, and 
week after week, for weeks and months, and for aught they 
knew till they died : living by Faith, and that Faith not 
their own : with free passage everywhere but no port : shut 
out from all men but only shut in by Infinity : themselves 
seeming the only habitable spot in the world, and they a 
floating speck without another known one any where attain- 
able — this was the lot of Columbus's crew. They hated it, 
and murmured at it, and endured it. They were men — em- 
phatically manly — but still ordinary, commonplace men. 
Columbus, he foresaw all this, and foreseeing chose it; nay, 
he willed it and exulted in it. And this it is which makes 
Columbus a great man. And scarcely, I think, can we pic- 
ture to ourselves a grander sight than this man sitting by 
his helm not cheerful only but joyous ; with his spirit moved 
to deep thankfulness at every breeze that blew him from his 
home ; with no wish nearer to his heart, no prayer oftener 
on his lips, than that these breezes should blow and blow on 
till they bore him to the utmost boundaries of the globe. 
There he sits — that once seaboy of Genoa, that alms-asking 
wayfarer at La Rabida, that visionary hoverer about the 
court of Castile — there he sits with the wildness of his eyes 
now dimmed into mildness by the tear of gratitude for his 
high destiny; sometimes silent, sometimes with audible 
utterances of joy, as his crazy caravel careers through the 



GG CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS. 

waters. His men, sulkily in groups, eye him with mingled 
awe and hate. He reads what they look, he hears what they 
say : but he sits unmoved : only now and then speaking 
kindly to the timid, and thundering out his orders to the 
sullen. First and last, early and late, a watcher is he, 
almost sleepless: but when he does lie down it is with 
prayer and thanksgiving, and to rise up each day stirred by 
an increased excitement, the offspring not of Fear but of 
Faith. And so there he sails, a dim speck on a waste of 
waters seeming boundless — moving ever onwards to the 
"West : there he sails, with his heart beating quick with the 
hope that he shall be permitted to plant the Cross amid the 
countless tribes of a New Hemisphere : there he sails, full of 
faith, full of courage — an earnest heroic man, and an humble 
worshipper of God — and every generous heart that could 
have known of him as he went must have said, and said 
devoutly, And God's blessing go with him. And so it did : 
for the very day after the mutiny they see a branch of a 
thorn with berries on it float by them : they are all excite- 
ment. Again, a small board : they are all hope. Again, a 
rudely carved stick : they are all confidence. On the night 
of the 11th of October Columbus sees a Light. All the crews 
watch till dawn. Soon a seaman cries Land, and to their 
straining eyes before sunrise is revealed, a Peopled Shore. 
The crews bless Columbus, Columbus blesses God. 

Columbus disembarks, and on landing kneels down and 
returns thanks to God, and plants upon that first fruits of 
the New World— the Symbol of the Cross and the Standard 
of Castile. Strange and tumultuous must have been his 
feelings now. He has solved the riddle of centuries, and 
given to all men of all time knowledge as of another world. 
For this it was he had sacredly cherished within him that 
Idea which was as a fire consuming while it warmed him : 
For this he had wandered about from kingdom to kingdom, a 



CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS. 67 

seeming visionary and needy adventurer, and borne seven 
years' scorn as such from proud Castile : For this he had 
toiled and endured, hoped and prayed, throughout the whole 
prime of life : and now he possessed all he had so long 
believed. This was the proudest, happiest, solemnest, 
moment of his life. There were others when he was more 
honoured, more praised, more wondered at — as on his return 
— but to one who, as Columbus, regarded himself as an 
instrument of the Most High, there could be no day in his 
life like this twelfth day of October, 1492. 

The savages received Columbus and his crew as angels 
from the skies. The new land was all that he expected and 
more. He seems at first to have lived in a kind of riot of 
Imagination : but herein too see his superiority to all about 
him. His crew wanted to remain and enjoy themselves, as 
ordinary men would ; but all enjoyment of his toils Columbus 
was determined to deny himself, lest the profit of his disco- 
very might run the greater risk of being lost to mankind. 
Columbus therefore will cruise but little : He is deserted by 
one of his ships in consequence, and loses another by ship- 
wreck. With the crew and wreck of this latter he forms a 
settlement, and builds a fortress. 

On the 4th of January, 1493, he sets sail for Spain : 
meets with all kinds of difficulties and most extraordinary 
tempests, but, through God's mercy, enters once more the 
well-known port of Palos on the 15th of March. 

A strange contrast is his entry now to his first appearance 
there, begging bread for his boy : or even to his departure 
thence seven or eight months before, amid the murmurs and 
the hate of all. Now there are loud shouts from the shore, 
hearty greetings in the market place : all crowd around him 
as he walks to the old Church to return public thanks to 
Almighty God for late mercies vouchsafed to him : they 
stare, they point with the finger, they bless him. And his 



63 CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS. 

journey from Palos to Barcelona (where the Court is) is like 
a Festival Procession all the way ; such ringing of bells and 
climbing on house tops — such holiday crowds — in every 
towTi through which he passes. As he approaches, all the 
pageantry of the Court is employed to give him homage; 
and as he enters with his Indians and his Gold — his Birds 
and Animals and Plants, and all his curious but peaceful 
spoils — it would have reminded you of a Roman Triumph. 
No tricksy show is it — no mountebank parade : but rather a 
grave and solemn sight, though so joyful. A whitehaired 
reverend man, lofty in his bearing as one might be w r ho 
remembered that the honour which he w T as receiving he had 
earned — proud but in no way vain — such an one is the Idol 
and Peaceful Victor of the day. The Sovereigns rise at his 
approach, and bid him be seated in their presence. They 
listen with rapt attention to his story; and when he has 
done, all fall on their knees and thank God, and on rising 
chant together the Te Deum. Columbus is sumptuously 
entertained at Court: the news of his discovery spreads 
rapidly throughout Europe, and Columbus becomes world- 
famous. He renews his vow of a Crusade : and is now at 
the acme of his honour. 

As with Luther's return from the Diet of Worms ends 
what I termed the Scenic History of the Reformation, so 
with Columbus's departure from the Court at Barcelona ends 
the Scenic History of the Discovery of the New World. As 
Luther, so Columbus did much afterwards — much that was 
most valuable — but little that adds to our estimate of his 
greatness or materially modifies our present conceptions of 
his character. 

Columbus made three voyages more to the lands he had 
discovered : but I shall not lay before you the particulars of 
their history. He met with more than an ordinary portion 
of adventure and of hardship. He had to endure mutinies 



CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS. 69 

and shipwrecks — perils by land and perils on the deep : but 
I pass by all these things, as they were things which he 
could not help and did not choose : and which thousands of 
others who have been in nowise great men have borne as 
well as he; and as I have said, to bear well inevitable 
danger is only manly, it is nothing more : to choose it rather 
than forego the accomplishment of some spiritual end, this 
alone is great. 

On the 25th of September, 1493, Columbus leaves the bay 
of Cadiz with 3 ships of 100 tons and 14 caravels and 1500 
men. When he arrives at his colony he finds all things in 
the saddest state : all destroyed, through the bad conduct of 
the colonists, as was but too apparent. He builds a new 
town (which he calls Isabella) and forms a new settlement. 
He discovers the Caribbee Islands, Puerto Rico, and Ja- 
maica ; and returns to Spain 11th of June, 1496. 

During the three years that he had been absent people 
had got accustomed to the wonder of a new world. It is not 
easy to keep up a state of excitement for very long even by 
miracles ; it is impossible without them : and Columbus 
could not discover a New World every three years ; and so 
his popularity diminished, and on his return from this second 
voyage of his (a voyage successful beyond any other ever 
made but his former one) he had to defend himself instead of 
to receive honour. Complaints — numerous and heavy — had 
been made against him in his absence by those who had 
returned before him ; and he found on his arrival many of 
his former friends quite changed. However, he was well 
received by the Sovereigns, and proposes another voyage, 
which is acceded to, but delayed. 

On the 30th of May, 1498, he sails again with six ships. 
His crew are principally convicts ; he could get none other, so 
unpopular is he. His own enthusiasm however is as great 
as ever : but his health is broken. He discovers Trinidad, 



70 CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS. 

the mouths of the Orinoco, the Coast of Peru, and many 
Islands. He goes to Hispaniola to recruit his health, and 
governs there. But dissensions of all kinds arise, and evil 
reports reach Spain. The unproductiveness of the island, 
and regret at having given so much power into the hands 
of a man who is now no longer necessary to him, influence 
the King to supersede him. The island did not pay its 
expenses — it was indeed a source of loss instead of profit — 
and this supplied his enemies with a plausible logic to prove 
either bad faith, or bad management. Columbus's loyalty 
was as great as his bravery. He obeyed instantly the man 
who was sent to supersede him, and submissively wore the 
Chains which that man without authority dared to insult 
him with. Yes, Columbus returns from his third voyage to 
the world he had discovered in Chains. 

This is ingratitude too great : the meanness of his 
enemies has over-shot itself. There is instant reaction : a 
general burst of indignation at the Court is echoed through- 
out Spain. The Sovereigns do all they can to atone for his 
disgrace. They give him the amplest assurances and pro- 
mises of royal favour, and furnish him with all things 
necessary for another voyage. But this fourth voyage is 
cautiously and somewhat craftily postponed by agreement 
with Columbus for two years. Columbus cannot be idle all 
this time. So he stirs up the Sovereigns to accomplish his 
long-cherished scheme of a Crusade, avowing his conviction 
that this was his Great Mission, to which his discoveries 
were but preparatory. He pleads this with the greatest 
earnestness (indeed it was the ruling passion of his life) and 
emphatically beseeches them not to scoff at him as one 
unlearned and a mere mariner : but to bear in mind that 
this was the case before, and he had been successful beyond 
their anticipations, and that the Holy Spirit works not only 
in the learned but also in such as he. He afterwards writes 



CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS. 71 

an elaborate book explaining and vindicating his plans, and 
presents it to the Queen. Nothing, however, is done. 

When the two years had passed over, on the 9th of May- 
he sails from Cadiz with 4 ships of 70 and 50 tons and 150 
crew — aged 66 — to seek a short passage to India. One of 
his younger brothers and his younger son sailed with him. 
On the 7th of November, 1504, he returns — unsuccessful — 
broken by age and manifold infirmities. He lingers in 
neglect, poverty, and pain ; and dies in much that state of 
mind in which I introduced him to you, on the 20th of May, 
1506. 

And now before summing up his Character, I must say 
here of Columbus's Discovery of a World as of Luther's 
Reformation of a Church, that all attempts to account for it 
by anecdotes, or to diminish his claims to greatness of mind 
by suggesting doubts about his originality, are at the least 
inadequate. Nobody did before him what Columbus did, 
and therefore I argue that they could not do it. If any 
Europeans had been on the American coast before, it had 
been because they could not help it: because they were 
carried there by winds or currents they could not bear up 
against. They did not seek it : they reckoned it their 
misfortune, sailing thitherwards : it was at the best to them 
but an accident. Many men have thus done great good to 
mankind without intending it : there is nothing great in 
this. A man must contemplate the object he effects before I 
call him Great : not that he must see all its consequences, 
but only that he must perceive its main tendencies. This 
was precisely the case with Columbus. Surely Columbus 
did not find a world by accident : he went after it and 
looked for it while other people stayed at home and scoffed 
at him. For eighteen long years — all the prime of his life — 
he pondered over the idea of the world, and was fully fixed 
to count all things lost to manifest that idea to all men : 



72 CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS. 

and he sacrificed everything to this one end : enduring the 
world's buffeting if only he might promote the world's 
benefit : and this is what I call doing great things. That 
he had some grounds of reason and of science to go upon, 
and did not go forth as a seafaring Quixote, seeking worlds 
where there were none, and magnifying coral-banks into 
continents — is greatly to his credit. But these grounds of 
reason and of science were common to all of his time : and 
after all were but objects of faith and not of knowledge. 
And if any one might have done it, why did not some one 
do it before ? Or, at least, why did not some one then urge 
Columbus to do it ? Surely Columbus was not driven to the 
new world by the clamorous prejudices or high-wrought ex- 
pectations of the old. Surely he was no mere product of 
Public Opinion. Indeed public opinion has never made any 
great man ; nor even any great thing : a plough even or a 
printing-press: bread out of corn, or wine out of grapes. 
No, the times do not make great men: God makes them. 
This we should do well, as I have already said, to think 
of steadily. It is a truth which interprets and illumines 
history. 

The fact is, Columbus was a man with an Idea in him — 
which is not that which the Public for the most part have. 
It may seem to us simple enough that Land might be found 
by sailing Westward : but any riddle is easy enough when 
it is guessed, and it had not been guessed before Columbus. 
Nay, I would go further and say that this riddle had not been 
fairly and fully proposed before Columbus. He suggested 
the scheme which he executed and, as Newton, first stated 
the problem which he solved. And it is very remarkable 
how from the moment that Columbus imbibed the idea of a 
new world, it never forsook him even for a season : from the 
first moment he believed it at all, he believed it unhesitat- 
ingly and uninterruptedly. He never spoke in doubt about 



CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS. 73 

it, but just as if he had seen it all, From that moment he 
spoke and acted as one who had something great — a reality, 
though indefinite — in his possession : (and herein is an idea 
differenced from a mere notion or conjecture : that it is its 
own evidence : that it is as an answer to a riddle — by- 
solving it, it authenticates itself) from that moment he 
deemed himself an inspired instrument of God for the accom- 
plishment of His purposes. In fact this idea at once dis- 
tinguished and ennobled him. It infused into him a solemn 
enthusiasm : it gave him Reverence, it gave him Courage. 
And withal it excited his Imagination : it made him a Poet 
in feeling and in thought : it gave a sublimity and energy to 
all he did. Indeed perhaps this largeness and activity of his 
Imagination was necessary for his becoming a Discoverer, 
instead of remaining ever only a Speculator ; it was necessary 
for his practical victory over all those imaginary difficulties 
with which the minds of other men were filled. It led him 
certainly into great errors : but without he had made the two 
great ones which he did make, he probably would never 
have attempted the discovery which he made. Columbus's 
two great mistakes were his suppositions, that Asia was 
immensely larger than it is, and that the circumference of 
the earth was greatly less than it is. The Azores — which 
t lie about 300 leagues from the main land — was the furthest 
land which men of his time knew of West : and he sup- 
posed that between them and the eastern coast of Asia there 
might lie perhaps 5000 miles with Islands interspersed. 
And even to the day of his death he was ignorant of much of 
the peculiar value and significance of what he had been 
permitted to do. He thought the lands he had discovered 
were portions of the Asiatic Continent and therefore called 
them the West Indies ; neither he nor any one else in his 
time knew that the land which he had discovered was an 
entirely distinct portion of the globe, separated by oceans 



74 CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS. 

from the ancient world. But the immense importance 
(though not the precise nature) of his discoveries Columbus 
did see. They were to him what he contemplated : and as 
for all else, his very errors and infirmities were parts of his 
qualifications for his work. I say, infirmities : for he was 
believing overmuch. He had so deep an awe of the Divine 
in every conceivable form that he was easily deceived by 
any appearance of the grand or supernatural : and his mind 
was so prepossessed by prophetical and traditional represen- 
tations as to be perpetually misinterpreting the meaning of 
the appearances presented to him. If he found a region 
more beautiful than any he had before seen, it was the 
primeval Paradise : if he found traces of ancient gold mines 
they were to him Solomon's mines of Ophir. But putting 
aside his mere opinions, and looking only at his principles, 
he was a visionary of a most noble kind. He was not so 
much a Dreamer as a Seer : his visions turned out in the 
main to be the results of insight and of foresight : and his 
enthusiasm did not abate, but increased, with age : which 
fact is just the evidence we want that it was not the off- 
spring of Fancy but of Faith. He was indeed throughout 
the greater portion of his life, and in the very nature of his 
character, a devout man — a worshipping man. Morning and 
evening he always had public worship on board ship : and 
his first act on disembarking anywhere was to worship God. 
The religious feelings of Columbus pervaded all that he did: 
his letters, journals, petitions, writings on prophecy and his 
last will, are tinctured throughout with Christian thoughts. 
This last document provides that there may be in His- 
paniola, Four good Professors of Theology, to the end and 
aim of their studying and labouring to convert to our Holy 
Faith the inhabitants of the Indies : and that in proportion 
as by God's will the revenues of the States shall increase, in 
the same degree shall the number of teachers and devout 



CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS. 75 

persons increase, who should strive to make Christians of the 
natives, in attaining which no expense should be thought 
too great. 

Indeed Columbus is a very fine specimen of a man of 
Faith — illustrating admirably the great energy which there 
is in this gift, in a worldly way as well as in a spiritual. 
I call it Faith in Columbus, to bear up so long as he did 
against neglect and hardship and contempt for the sake of 
an Idea : I call it Faith in him, when he rejected the offer 
of Spain at the hazard of having his enterprise abandoned at 
the very moment of its otherwise probable accomplishment : 
I call it Faith in him, to venture all as he finally did on 
the assumption that the earth was a globe when it seemed 
a plain, and almost all but himself would have it so. Diaz 
and De Gama, were great navigators : and Magellan the 
first circumnavigator, and our own Captain Cook, and 
Drake, and others, were very considerable characters : but 
they do not seem to me altogether such as Columbus. He 
was what they were, and a something more which raises 
him out of their class into the first of Men of Action : an 
imperial man truly. Take away the story of Columbus 
from the annals of Spain, and there would be a blank 
greater than that caused by the absence of any other : and I 
say that a man who can thus ennoble the history of a nation, 
is probably a great man. Look too at the poor tools he had 
to work his great work with : nothing but a compass and a 
quadrant had he to guide him over an ocean where no ship 
had ever sailed before : and such vessels — not much better 
than our coal craft — half-barge, half-ship — with oars and no 
deck : with no trustworthy charts and a crew of convicts. 
And yet with all this, so confident, so uncomplaining, even 
imparting out of his own abundance, energy and hope to all 
around him. An unselfish, generous, kindly man was he : 
ever more anxious about his crew than himself, and his 



76 CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS. 

Cause than either. No one seemed so careless of the gold 
he was seeking for as he did : all he wanted with it was to 
Crusade with it — a visionary object you may call it, but you 
cannot justly call it a mean one. No, at least there was 
no money-meanness about this man. In earliest youth — 
when aboard ship as a common sailor — he used to send 
home money to his father for his brother's schooling ; and in 
the very height of his prosperity he never seems to have 
had more money than sufficed for the common needs of 
life: and even until his death he had no home of his own 
anywhere in Europe. You may recollect perhaps what I 
said to you about the high terms he asked the Sovereigns 
for his Discovery, which he would not bate. But as I told 
you when I mentioned them, this was mainly a mode of 
getting impressed upon the minds of the Sovereigns and 
recognised among the people, the worth and dignity of his 
enterprise : and I should add, that among all the titles which 
were offered him he would not use or accept himself — and 
begged his sons never to use or accept — any other than that 
of The Admiral. He claimed indeed and received the pen- 
sion for the first discovery of land offered by the Sovereigns 
(whereas if you remember he first saw only a Light, and a 
seaman first cried Land) : yet if we bear in mind how this is 
a mere quibble of the letter — and how much it was a matter 
of honour rather than of money — we need not think much of 
this. His whole character refutes the notion of his being 
mercenary. Verily Columbus was no vulgar adventurer, no 
self-seeking trader. T^hen he asked a tithe of the profits of 
his discoveries, it was accompanied with the solemnest vow, 
that if he should gain them he would raise an army and 
march with it into Palestine to rescue the Holy Land from 
the power of the infidels. And this was no passing dream, 
no sudden caprice. He longed for it in his youth, and 
laboured for it all his life, and provided for it in his Will 



CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS. 77 

Aye, he was a strangely bargaining man, this Columbus : no 
ordinary trader at any rate : for when he did trade, it was to 
barter his Life for liberty to give men the knowledge of a 
world — the profit of the discovery of a continent for the 
privilege of going upon a Crusade. And such a crusade : 
Five Thousand Horse, and Fifty Thousand Foot. 

In summing up the character of Columbus I will only, in 
conclusion, say, that in whatever way we look at this man — 
whether as a private or a public man — as a sailor or a man 
of genius — as a member of Society or as a member of the 
Church — and bear in mind the circumstances in which God 
caused him to be placed, we cannot but pronounce him a 
great and a good man. And when we mark how much he 
did in his lifetime and with what insignificant instruments : 
how he started into the fulness of his achievements only in 
the maturity of life, after long waiting and suffering all its 
prime — and when we see what a giant's work he did when 
other men's energies seem mostly well-nigh spent — and how 
little help he had to do it with from any one about him — 
we cannot, I think, hesitate to pronounce him one of those 
gifted Few who stand out among men as the half-inspired 
Heroes of their race. "We cannot, I think, but say that if 
Luther is to us the type of a bold, titanic, unweariable 
Champion of Truth, Columbus may be regarded by us as an 
equally fitting representative of the faithful, patient, enthu- 
siastic Seeker after Knowledge : and we may assuredly wish 
that we each of us in our several callings may do the work 
God has given us to do as well : and that in faithfulness of 
heart, and in singleness of purpose, and in earnestness of 
effort, we may be either as Luther or as Columbus. 



FEANCIS XAVIEE. 



Op all Great Men I count the greatest the Christian Apostle. 
Be he Martyr, or be he only Missionary, I count him the 
noblest man who unites the love of Christ with the love of 
Truth ; who gives himself up a living sacrifice that he may 
do good service to Him who has redeemed him ; who counts 
his life not dear unto him if he may only turn men from 
darkness unto light, and from the service of Sin unto God. 
To be a Christian at all, this of itself is to possess some ele- 
ments of greatness, inasmuch as the struggle it implies (the 
struggle against invisible enemies) demands earnest determi- 
nation of the will, and the victory which is its issue (the vic- 
tory over the world, the flesh, and the devil), this is no mean 
achievement. But to be a Christian Apostle is much more 
than this. It is to be a man to whom Faith gives so clear 
an insight into the Invisible that the things that are seen 
and temporal are cast into the shade ; it is to be a man full 
of zeal as well as of knowledge, of energy as well as of piety ; 
a man to whom has been revealed no mere Dream of the 
Future but its very Vision : an impression, an influence, a 
force from Above which, while it penetrates and purifies 
conspicuously his own character, makes him long to impart 



FRANCIS XAVIER, 79 

to others as much as he may of what he himself enjoys. 
The Missionary's calling is indeed a high one. It is not 
merely as the ordinary Christian's, to be a shining light, it is 
also to be a burning one. It is not merely for a man to do 
his duty in that state of life in which it has pleased God to 
call him, but it is to leave that state in which he might 
lawfully remain, to obey a call to a nobler and more arduous 
one : it is not merely to strive for the mastery over himself, 
but to strive for the mastery over many others : it is not 
merely to run for an incorruptible crown, but it is to labour 
that by turning many others unto righteousness he may 
himself shine as the stars for ever and ever. To deny him- 
self what he might otherwise enjoy ; to renounce happiness 
which he might otherwise retain; to go forth from home, 
not knowing whither he goes : to have no inheritance in 
any land even so much as that he may set his foot on ; to 
be emphatically a stranger and pilgrim on earth, having no 
certain dwelling-place in prospect but the grave : to do this 
continuously and cheerfully, without murmuring and without 
repenting, as long as God shall grant him the light and the 
strength — this is a Christian missionary's calling. And of 
all such men who have ever lived I figure to myself St Paul 
as the noblest. A man he was of all men the most large- 
minded and the most high-souled : filled to overflowing with 
zeal and love both for God and for his neighbour : resting 
neither day nor night in proclaiming to every creature under 
heaven whom he could reach the glorious tidings of the 
blessed Gospel which was committed to his trust. A man 
of unweariable zeal, martyred at threescore in the fulness of 
his vigour : of sympathy as tender as his daring was noble : 
impassioned always when concerned for others, most calm 
when he himself is most in danger : living so that it would 
have been for him at any time gain to die, and yet content 
and choosing so to live : a very impersonation of energy 



80 FRANCIS XAVIER. 

and earnestness, of generosity and self-sacrifice — such 
was St Paul. In labours most abundant, in perils oft, 
in luxury never : doing great things unconsciously, and 
daring dangers without dreading them : vigorous and reso- 
lute, with heart as pure as warm : manly, gentle, every way 
noble ; such, I say, was St Paul. And though a far differ- 
ent, and as to force of intellect and completeness of character, 
a far inferior man, yet such in kind and in a good degree was 
he of whom I am to speak to you this evening. Sanctity 
and zeal : power of self-control and endurance ; untiring 
energy and thorough disinterestedness — these were his in an 
apostolic degree : and for most of the qualities which fit a 
man for being an efficient Missionary of the Gospel, I know 
no one since apostolic times who seems to have possessed 
them in a greater measure than Francis Xavier. I might 
indeed point you to many who have since his time been 
labouring even on something of the same ground as he, for 
instances of particular graces perhaps as illustrious. There 
is the paternal Schwartz — the chosen guardian of princes 
and the common idol of many peoples; a Christian Patri- 
arch; honoured throughout Christendom while living, and all 
but worshipped by the heathen when dead; a most gentle, 
noble, princely Priest. There is Claudius Buchanan — the 
patient seeker after lost sheep, for years searching diligently 
till he find them ; the hardy, clear-headed, unweariable In- 
vestigator and Preacher of Truth. There is Henry Martyn 
— a man whose name is dear to us all, and whose praise is 
in all the Churches ; but a man whose mind and body were 
alike unfitted for suoh work as Xavier did : a man who was 
more a missionary in spirit, and less a missionary in act, 
than any other whom we read of. There is the venerable 
Carey, as catholic in heart as sectarian in creed : There is 
the accomplished and amiable Heber — the type of a Mis- 
sionary Prelate. At Malacca — the frequent scene of Xavier's 



FRANCIS XAVIER. 81 

labours — I might point you to the admirable Milne, assidu- 
ous but stationary : in China — the home of Xavier's dreams 
— to the honest, benevolent, indefatigable Morrison, doing 
the labours of a Hercules in the spirit of a John. But none 
of these seem to me so wonderful as Xavier. They each of 
them only did a part of that of which Xavier did the whole. 
Xavier preached and printed, travelled and translated, 
founded Churches and presided over Colleges : he disputed 
publicly with heathen doctors : reformed the lives of his own 
countrymen : he catechised, and baptised, and visited the 
sick, and ministered in every way as a priest wherever he 
dwelt, and yet journeyed beyond all precedent and all imita- 
tion. In fact he did, and did so well as to do lastingly, all 
those divers offices which we have since seen distributed 
among many : and did all, too, without any of those worldly 
instruments which they have had to help them. Poor even 
to destitution; in association with no predecessors in his 
work : a single-handed, simple-hearted man : with nothing 
to influence other men with but that inward force which 
Faith working by Love will give a man — Xavier converted 
whole tribes to the confession of the Faith ; and though in 
many ways marred by error of creed and of judgment, I be- 
lieve he may be well placed at the head of all uninspired 
catalogues of those who in modern times have wrought 
righteousness, and subdued kingdoms unto Christ. 

But what did Xavier do ? Why, it is said that he tra- 
velled in the cause of the Gospel fifty thousand miles in 
heathen lands, and founded Christian churches there which 
numbered at his death half a million of members. But being 
fearful of exaggeration we will say (taking half the assertion 
in one case, and a tithe of it in the other) that he journeyed 
as much as once round the circumference of the earth in the 
cause of the Gospel, and was the instrument of bringing 
over fifty thousand heathens to the confession of the Christian 

F 



82 FRANCIS XAVIER. 

Faith. And this I say is a great doing : it is the day's work 
of a spiritual giant. And when we consider how he did this 
— with what an absence of all worldly aids, and at what ex- 
pense of personal endurance — how thoroughly he did his 
work, and in how short a time — his greatness gains upon us. 
Ten years only was he allowed to labour; and therefore 
when we learn that he preached the Gospel and founded 
Churches from the coast of Africa to that of China — from 
Mozambique to Japan — planting the Cross on numerous 
lands which had never heard of the name of Christ, and 
whose own names were previously unheard of in the speech 
of European men — we cannot but say, I think, that at least 
relatively to ourselves, he was no slothful servant of his 
Master, but that working while it was day with him, the 
recompence of his deeds done in the body will be, though 
gratuitous, most large. 

The story of Xavier is this : 

In the year that Columbus died Francis Xavier was born. 
His birth-place was the Castle of Xavier, in Navarre. He 
was inimitably illustrious by descent : of gentle, noble, royal 
race. He was the youngest of a large family : brought up 
at home for a while with no strict discipline, but yet in a 
somewhat instructive way : though free not lawless : wan- 
dering at will amid the wild pine-forests and dark precipitous 
rocks of his Pyrenean home. And so amid the silent majesty 
of surrounding nature, and under the impressive influences 
of a religious household, he grows up an enthusiastic and 
somewhat superstitious boy: contemplative, complying, 
gentle, but withal of a robust manly cast : studious at times, 
but also fond of athletic sports, fondest of all excitement 
whether of danger or of pleasure : fitfully idle, ambitious : 
an uncommon compound. All his brothers chose to be 
soldiers : he would be a Scholar, that he might thus add to 
his family distinctions that only ornament they wanted, 



FRANCIS XAVIEE. 83 

Learning. So he goes up to the University of Paris, at 
eighteen : a fine youth full of life and buoyancy : well 
favoured every way: above the middle size, well formed, 
with blue eyes and dark auburn hair : of pleasing rather 
than of remarkable bearing. He lives at college (the college 
of St Barbara) much as other youths of his time, only more 
successfully uniting study with pleasure than most. He 
takes his degree as Master of Arts at twenty, and is appoint- 
ed to teach Philosophy at Beauvais College soon after, 
though he still keeps his rooms in St Barbe. He does this 
with applause : and when he has been thus engaged for a 
year and a half, or more, a strange man — lame and mean 
looking, and much older than men usually go up to college, 
perhaps fifteen years older than himself— who has just en- 
tered as a pensioner of the college, comes into rooms near 
his. You could not have made much out of this man's 
appearance as to who or what he was : nor would the stories 
you would have heard in college, though true enough, have 
helped you much. They say that he is a nobleman's son — 
of Biscay ; that he has been an officer, brave and chivalrous, 
and that he made a noble defence at Pampeluna in the late 
war. And they have got a story about his lameness — how- 
he was wounded at that siege, and how he was such a 
vanity-loving man at that time, that after his leg had been 
set and got well, he had it broken again and re-set rnercly 
because he thought it not quite so well shaped as it might 
have been made. However, as I have said, this would not 
have taught you much as to what kind of a man he now is. 
Be sure this man is more than he looks ; how self-possessed 
he is and yet not forbidding, and what measured musical 
speech is his : such qualities are not vulgar ones. Xavier 
begins to be a good deal with him. There is a certain 
chiselled statuary symmetry about the man, attractive but 
not satisfying : Xavier admires him, but does not very much 



84 FRANCIS XAVIER. 

like him either : he is so spiritual, so unworldly : caring so 
little for pleasure, and talking so much about the soul. He 
is not austere, indeed — at least towards others, though ex- 
ceedingly so towards himself — but he is so unexcitable: if 
not an iron, yet a marble, man. And besides, he is so un- 
couth in his dress, so dirty, so slovenly : altogether so singu- 
lar. Xavier ventures to rally him, to ridicule him ; but not 
very harshly, the stranger is so solemn and so meek. The 
lame man likes Xavier, though he does not like his way of 
living, for Xavier is becoming very gay. He takes many 
opportunities, both when Xavier is busy and when he is 
alone, to ask him, what it will profit him if he shall gain the 
whole world and lose his own soul. As they walk together 
after lectures, and Xavier eagerly urges some scheme of 
amusement, he is only answered by the words, Francis, 
What shall a man receive in exchange for his soul ? These 
words — so often, so calmly, so solemnly said — troubled 
Xavier: and the more so as he is getting into difficulties 
otherwise by his worldly pleasure-hunting life. The lame 
man is quite as kind as he is solemn, and as able to help 
liim out of his difficulties as he is willing. Xavier learns 
by degrees how his monitor was once as he is now : how he 
was brought up at court and as a soldier : and how he lived 
in pleasure for thirty years of his life, and how he now counts 
himself to have been as dead while he so lived : and how a 
great change came over his spirit on his recovery from an 
illness, and then reading the Life of Christ and the Lives 
of the Saints, so that from that time, old things began to 
pass away and all things to become new to him : and how, 
mindful of sickbed vows, he went to the abbey of the Bene- 
dictines at Mountserrat, and hung up his sword there, and 
set forth with a staff and a wallet, and all lame as he was, 
walked bareheaded and barefooted, straightway to Jeru- 
salem. Xavier finds that though he is a tutor and his friend 



FRANCIS XAVIRR. 85 

but a pupil, his proper place is at his scholar's feet. And so 
there he sits : and when he learns that this man's anxiety to 
become a scholar, and at the same time to discipline himself 
in humility, was so great that at the age of thirty-three — 
noble as he was by birth, and having served so conspicu- 
ously in the wars — he goes to a common day school at 
Barcelona, and begins at the beginning of his grammar just 
as any other of the scholars, and bears all manner of jests 
from the boys with the greatest good humour — when, I say, 
Xavier learns all this, and sees how strict he is in all obser- 
vances of the Church, how self-denying and how pure, he 
begins to believe he has been ridiculing a saint unawares. 
He begins to listen to him in quite another spirit, and thus 
listening he learns, and learning he loves. He associates 
with him oftener: they become to be seldom apart. The 
peculiar penetrating speech of the stranger distils itself upon 
Xavier's heart as dew, and freshens it in its feverishness : 
he grows to like nothing so well : nay, now he cannot do 
without it. For a change has come over Xavier's soul: 
new powers are awakening within him : his eyes are being 
enlightened: the Visible is growing dim, the Invisible is 
coming out into the day. He struggles hard with his new 
thoughts, but ultimately vainly: for after five years daily 
intercourse Xavier yields himself as heartily as tardily to the 
solemn influence of that strange, mean-looking, lame pen- 
sioner of St Barbara — Ignatius Loyola. 

A word or two I must speak of this man now — a word or 
two of his followers before I have done : for you may readily 
suppose, from what has already been said, that he exercised 
the greatest influence over Xavier's mind. Indeed such 
brothers do they become in heart and life, that unless you 
understand something of Loyola you cannot understand 
much of Xavier. And indeed this man is worth your medi- 
tating upon, for he is a man of a very peculiar nature. In 



86 FRANCIS XAV1ER. 

his youth as fine a specimen as you could see anywhere of 
Spanish chivalry: but cut off in his prime from a career 
which promised him brilliant fortunes, his energy and ardour 
were afterwards directed into a spiritual course. It is diffi- 
cult to speak of the change wrought in him as we did of 
Luther's : it does not seem so much a change in the kind as 
in the quality of his spiritual tastes — in the degree of the 
elevation rather than in the direction of his aims. There is 
the same ambition in him, as it appears to me, after he has 
addicted himself to a spiritual life as before : the same love of 
rule, the same self-reliance. He is always a knight, a sol- 
dier, a warrior : every thing about him is military, to the 
very name of his Order. Throughout all his Exercises we 
read continually of the Standard of Christ and of Lucifer as 
of some real things : and how Heaven is to be taken only by 
Violence, and the Devil to be resisted by a kind of physical 
conflict : and how the world is a great battle plain : every- 
where fighting. True, very true, is this in one sense, but 
not altogether true, not true by itself — a part of the truth 
only, and as hurtful to Ignatius as half-truths ever are to 
any man who takes them for the whole. It leads him to 
consider all virtue as comprised in that which is the mere 
soldier's — obedience, obedience to his brother man : and thus, 
though rendering himself and his disciples able to dare and 
to endure such things as none others could, leaves a large 
portion of our nature uneducated, and the symmetry of the 
Christian character altogether unattained. Loyola's grand 
assumption is, that all things are conquerable assuredly to 
him who will first conquer himself: and that therefore a man 
must first make himself a Christian before he can make 
others such. But such making of himself a Christian does 
not answer with Loyola any better than with Luther, who 
has been trying the same only a few years before him. He 
is in much the same difficulties when he comes up to college 



FRANCIS XAVIEB. 87 

as Luther was when he left it. But after similar suffering, 
he ultimately solves his problem quite otherwise than Luther 
did : not by the Written Revelation, but by fancied imme- 
diate inspiration, by voices and visions, by mystery and 
mysticism of all kinds. In this state he is when Xavier 
unites himself to him. He is forming that society of his 
which has since become so famous — the Company of Jesus 
— though it was authorised and constituted into a Religious 
Order by a Bull not until 1540. 

There is great goodness and great beauty, however, in 
that picture of himself which he has left us at this time. 
That simple saying of his, It is not enough that I serve the 
Lord myself, all hearts ought to love Him and all tongues 
ought to praise Him — betokens surely the indwelling in 
him of the characteristically Christian spirit — a spirit of 
communicative love. And the two great objects and prin- 
ciples of his Order as laid down by himself are noble too. 
1st. The salvation and sanctification of their own souls by 
joining duly together the active and the contemplative life. 
2nd. The salvation and sanctification of their neighbours' 
souls, by the education of youth and missions to the heathen. 
And this is another imposing peculiarity of his Society: 
That each member should go whithersoever the Pope might 
please to send him, and should never do auy spiritual act 
for money, or ever possess any ecclesiastical dignity or 
property in any country. Such principles and aims find a 
clear echo in the heart of Xavier, and he enters with all his 
heart and mind into the scheme for their accomplishment ; as 
do five others of their fellow students; and among them 
Peter Faber, the Savoyard shepherd's son, full of wild 
thoughts and intensest devotion — of whom after history 
Speaks so much. 

And so these seven men band together, and on the eve of 
the Feast of the Assumption, 1534, they repair to the sub- 



88 FRANCIS XAVIER. 

terranean chapel of Montmartre, and there amid the dark- 
ness — at dead of night — dedicate themselves by solemn vows 
to become Missionaries of the Church, and to preach the 
Gospel till they die to every man they meet. Full of 
enthusiasm are they, overflowing; but such is their self- 
control and clear insight, that they repress all for a while 
that they may more duly prepare themselves for so great a 
work by extraordinary spiritual exercises. Not until 1536 
do they propose a missionary crusade — and then only into 
Palestine ; and this mainly for self-education. When, how- 
ever, they find that the war which is waging between the 
Venetians and the Turks prevents all thought of this, they 
offer themselves to the Pope — without remuneration and 
without reservation — to be sent on any Evangelical Mission 
to any part of the world he may please. Their offer is tar- 
dily accepted ; and it is seven long years before their plans 
are effectively completed. These seven years of Xavier's 
life I will pass over, only observing that they were spent in 
all kinds of mortification and self-sacrifice — in most diligent 
performance of all priestly duties, and in the education of 
himself in medicine, and such other arts and sciences as he 
deemed would be most profitable amid uncivilized peoples. 
He lived in Italy the while — at Venice and Vicenza, at 
Bologna and at Rome — in hovels and in hospitals — reducing 
himself almost to death by his voluntary sufferings ; inces- 
santly tending the sick, and preaching to the whole wiierever 
they w T ould listen to him — in market-places and at crosses, 
in the corners of the streets and in churches : exhibiting to us 
throughout as striking an instance as we can meet with 
anywhere of an ecclesiastical zealot and a Christian ascetic. 
Xavier's lot has fallen to the East : we will now, then 
turn to him as he is stepping on board the ship which is to 
carry him to India. It is his thirty-fifth birth-day: and 
there you see him, a plain priest, with no followers of any 



FRANCIS XAVIEE. 89 

kind, no baggage, no purse nor scrip — with his Bible and 
his Breviary, a small vessel of silver, and that crucifix which 
hangs from his neek — his sole instruments of warfare : a tall, 
sinewy, fresh-coloured man ; of most gentle looks, and long 
hair hanging down over his friar's frock. A thousand com- 
panions in that noble ship has he, and he only of the thou- 
sand is calm, he only smiles. But for him the vision of the 
future is more sweet than the memory of what he is leaving 
is bitter. So disciplined in self-denial has he become, that 
though passing within sight of his paternal halls on his 
way to the ship, and feeling that his widowed mother's 
blessing would have been a joy indeed, and the sight of 
his saintly sister, the noble Abbess of St. Clare — yet he 
has denied himself this conference with flesh and blood, lest 
he should be turned aside by it from yielding to the high 
calling of a Christian Missionary : and now that he is on the 
very eve of being borne a myriad of miles from the land of 
his fathers, and thus removed finally from all temptation of 
drawing back, and irrevocably destined to this great sacrifice 
and labour of love, he is joyous rather than sad, as knowing 
that God is able to keep that which he has committed unto 
Him unto that day when he shall receive mother and sister 
and brothers, and what is worth a hundred times as much, 
in the New Paradise of God. And so they sail : and five 
months are they in doing that which is now done in as many 
weeks — getting to the Cape of Good Hope : but Xavier con- 
sidering the ship as his parish, finds work of charity for 
every hour of the day, and the employment of prayer for half 
the hours of the night. When on land for the last seven 
years — since he had been a disciple of Loyola's — he had 
lodged mostly in hospitals and lived mostly on alms : and so 
now, here in this ship, he gives up his own cabin to the sick, 
and divides his allowance from the Admirals table among 
those worse off than himself. He catechises and converses, 



90 FRANCIS XAVIER. 

visits and preaches, as often as he may : he prays with the 
whole crew every Sunday, and there is no day in which he 
does not pray for them. An apostolic primitive spirit there 
seems to be in him from the first ; and when they put in at 
Mozambique (on the eastern coast of Africa) to winter there, 
his labours are increased, and only terminated by his own 
serious illness. He has a local fever ; is near to dying : but 
recovers sufficiently to set sail again in March. Slowly they 
sail, touching here and there every now and then, not at all 
in modern fashion, until they land at Goa, which was the 
place of his present destination. This Goa was the Portu- 
guese capital in India. A Bishop of it had been appointed 
by the Pope a few years before, and there was a college of 
two years standing. It was a sad place spiritually. Along 
the coast and a little inland there were indeed forty villages 
of Nestorian Christians (who Luther said hold a creed 
differing but a shade from the orthodox), and these did not 
disgrace their name so much as the Catholic Christians of 
Goa. But still on the whole, Christianity was but poorly 
exemplified in this region; so poorly that Xavier's spirit 
was instantly moved within him to Reformation. So he sets 
about first the reformation of his own countrymen at Goa, 
before he attempts to convert the surrounding heathen. And 
the first thing he does for this end is, that he takes a bell 
and goes through all the streets, as a common crier, and sum- 
mons all the masters and heads of families for. the love of 
God to send their children and slaves to be catechised in 
church. Like Jonah in Nineveh seems he to the sinners of 
Goa : thrown upon them from the ocean to preach to them of 
coming wrath and instant repentance. A strange and per- 
chance a crazy man, they think this new priest: a trouble- 
some man at least, intruding upon them the world to come, 
and anxieties about their souls. But the children and the 
poor soon learn to love him, and they crowd about him, and in 






FRANCIS XAVIER. 91 

a few months he seldom can go to church without being fol- 
lowed by disciples more than he can teach. For a year he 
continues catechising and preaching, and visiting the sick: 
turning many to righteousness as much by the singular sim- 
plicity and sanctity of his life as by the fervid eloquence of 
his speech. The improvement too of the children improves the 
character of the parents : and Xavier strengthens this effect 
by the boldest and wiliest methods of personal influence and 
intercourse. Strange is it to read of the devices he adopts, 
and how he becomes as different persons to different men, in 
order to save some from sin ; and how successful he is. All 
men honour him, though some also fear him: and though 
there is a large mass of hardened wickedness in the place 
which he cannot influence, yet in scarcely more than a year 
Goa assumes the appearance of an European city. 

But the ministry of a town was not the vocation of 
Xavier. He must out into the wilds: for if ever there was 
a missionary in spirit, it is he. Repose formed no element 
of his character, and none seemed to welcome hardship so 
heartily as he, News is brought him that six hundred 
miles off there are some baptized natives, ignorant exceed- 
ingly, and yet longing to be instructed. They were the poor 
creatures engaged in the Pearl Fishery — Paravas — a people 
peculiar for their wretchedness. All about them he finds 
utterly miserable : themselves, their country, their dwellings, 
their mode of living: no one comfort or visible blessing. 
Xavier's language, however, writing from among them to 
Ignatius, breathes only of thankfulness and joy and deep 
delight in the work he was engaged in. He lives just as 
they do, on rice and water: associates with them as one of 
themselves : learns their rude utterances : teaches them little 
arts : becomes in every way their friend. He gradually 
preaches to them of God — and even of Christ — symbolically 
chiefly : he teaches them letters : and then to read simple 



92 FRANCIS XAYIER. 

words which he writes : he gets them to build little chapels, 
and interprets the Creed and Crucifix to them : and within a 
year finds such a change among them for the better as 
refreshes and inspires his own soul. After fifteen months he 
leaves them and returns to Goa for assistance. 

After having re-organised the college for the education of 
the natives there (of whom there were then sixty students), 
and having so arranged as that the college is henceforth 
given up to his Society (by the name of the College of St. 
Paul) he goes back to the Paravas, taking with him several 
missionary assistants. He finds them in a most melancholy 
condition in consequence of having been attacked and 
plundered by a neighbouring tribe : many have been driven 
from their homes, and multitudes are dying of starvation. 
Xavier, whose Faith works very much by Love, gets from 
the nearest Portuguese station twenty boat-loads of pro- 
visions, and distributes them among the blessings of the 
people. As soon as the first pressure of misery is relieved 
he betakes himself again to spiritual duties. And a remark- 
able life is that which he seems ever to lead here, personally 
and pastorally. All but three hours and a half of the 
twenty-four he wakes and works. Except these hours for 
sleep, the night is given to the improvement of his own soul 
through meditation and prayer and discipline : as soon as 
dawn lights up the waters, Xavier calls his people to wor- 
ship : all day he teaches the children, and the new converts : 
visits the sick: goes inland to other villages: and at twi- 
light again summons all to worship and vesper benediction. 
So he lives awhile, staying with them until he sees them 
re-settled; stations some of his followers among them, and 
then goes on with others into the kingdom of Travancore, 
where (his own letters tell us) he once baptised 10,000 (read 
1000) persons in one month. He gets thirty chapels built 
The people destroy their idols and their temples. The 



FRANCIS XAVIER. 93 

Brahmins hate him and threaten his life. He is shot at: 
they burn down the houses about him : he has sometimes to 
sleep in the woods, and at others we find him surrounded by 
a guard of converts both by day and by night. He does 
service (as Schwartz after him) to the king of the country 
by going out to use his influence and that of his followers 
with that tribe of plundering invaders whom we found 
attacking the Paravas, and thus obtained (as Schwartz too) 
the friendship of the king, and the name of the Great 
Father. The king, however, does not come over to the 
Faith, though he grants permission to the missionaries to 
preach it where they will. Xavier avails himself of this 
opportunity zealously. He travels about to this place and 
to that, night and day, preaching, and catechising, baptising 
and celebrating the eucharist : a more unweariable man you 
shall not find under the sun : I cannot tell you a tithe 
of what he does : and you must always remember that what 
I tell you in a minute w r as to him the fruit of the labours 
and the prayers of years. This, however, we see. that little 
acquainted with the language of the people as he is (and 
Xavier never was a good linguist) he has a marvellous 
faculty of making an impression upon the minds of rude 
men : that he exercises, if any one ever could or can, a kind 
of spiritual magnetism over men: that he can infuse his 
earnest thoughts into others with little help of articulate 
utterance, and can make his own feelings as it were infec- 
tious. I know of no one of whom are recorded such 
instances of communicative energy as of Xavier : no one 
who seems to have had so much influence over uncivilised 
people as he: none who by this alone has so thoroughly 
entitled himself to the apellation he was known by among 
his own — the Thaumaturgus (Wonder-worker) of the later 
ages of the Church. 

At length in September, 1545, he goes to Malacca, which 



94 FRANCIS XAVIER. 

was then as it is now, the central mart of India, China, and 
Japan. This he makes his centre, while he goes on a mis- 
sionary tour which lasted a year and a half. It would be 
useless for me to enter into details (here as elsewhere) with 
regard to the places he visited and the work he appears to 
have done at each, for their very names being quite strange 
to you, you would not remember much of what I might say. 
It must suffice to say once for all that I have never read of 
so much labour endured in the cause of Christianity by any 
one man, out of the Apostolic records, as by Francis Xavier. 
We have glimpses too of his interior life during this period 
through passages in his letters to Loyola, which have been 
carefully preserved: and if one may take these as faithful 
exhibitions of Xavier's mind, and intrepret them as one 
would similar words used by one of ourselves, we may 
assuredly say that this man is no inconsiderable Christian : 
that he is a saintly man : a man of prayer and of self-denial 
beyond all example of succeeding times. But even with 
great allowance for the great difference of language which 
there generally is between men of different countries and 
temperaments, and having reduced as much as may be a 
southern scale of expression to a northern one, one cannot 
but say that Xavier herein displays a zeal and a piety, a 
daring and a charity, which all his lamentable errors of 
belief and his sad superstitious infirmities cannot justly 
reduce to the standard of ordinary Christians. 

He returns to Malacca in 1548. Here for a while he is 
stationary but not idle : for here, as before at Goa, he assidu- 
ously attempts the reformation of the nominal Christians: 
and here again you might see him, bell in hand, going 
through the streets and crying loudly, Eepent. But he is 
not here long enough to make a great impression now. His 
stay however is not altogether vain : for while here exercis- 
ing his accustomed office of priest and spiritual overseer of 



FRANCIS XAVIER. 95 

all the baptised (I should have said before that he had been 
invested with this extensive jurisdiction by the Pope) a 
Japanese, of the name of Angeroo, addresses himself to 
Xavier as a Penitent. He had come more than a thousand 
miles on purpose to see him. He was a person of consider- 
ation in his own country, of noble birth and rich, but ob- 
liged to live an exile in consequence of having killed a man 
in a quarrel. Remorse of conscience brought him to Xavier 
(whose fame had spread even further than his home) and he 
found in Xavier's words the hope of forgiveness by a greater 
tribunal than that of his country. Xavier holds the most 
fervent, though the most gentle, talk with him: and tests 
the sincerity of his new resolutions by directing him to go as 
a student to the college of Goa, and await his arrival, which 
shall be shortly. Angeroo sets out for Goa, Xavier for 
Ceylon : thence he visits his old and first converts of the 
Pearl Fishery : and then travels along the coast to Goa. He 
represents this journey as a most successful one, and one 
that fills him with thankfulness and joy. As soon as he 
arrives at his old quarters at the Hospital he sets himself 
earnestly to the instruction of his Japanese convert. This 
man believes, and is baptised (by the name of Paul), and 
henceforth becomes to Xavier almost what Timothy was to 
the greatest of the Apostles. Rapidly indeed does the 
scholar — who is of a noble nature — ripen under such warmth 
and light : and as he feels more of the influence of the Faith 
in his own soul he feels increased longings to have it impart- 
ed to his countrymen. He pleads for them to Xavier. 
Xavier's heart was not such as could long hold out against 
the cry, Come over and help us, even though it should be 
wafted as now over a dreary distance of three thousand 
miles. To Japan he w T ill go : but not instantly ; Goa needs 
his presence : His own spirit too wants the refreshment to 
be obtained by participation in full Christian ordinances, by 



96 FBANCIS XAVIER. 

converse with fellow-christians. by tranquil contemplation. 
To these he gives himself up a while — more especially as he 
would wish to wait for some assistants from Europe, shortly 
to arrive. And such of his letters and memoranda as have 
been preserved relating to this period would seem to intimate 
that here in the college gardens of Goa he enjoyed revela- 
tions — not of Truths but of Feelings — apparently as unsuit- 
able to be uttered in words as those which were granted 
to the Apostle to whose honour this institution was dedi- 
cated. But he was not even now only a visionary : he was 
also what he was always., a labourer: accessible at all times 
to spiritual applicants — even amid his devotions, to children : 
and content to be interrupted at any time by the necessity of 
even only catechetical instruction; and spending half of all 
his waking hours in the hospitals and huts of the town. 
But in a few months five other members of the Society 
arrive, and having stationed these he feels himself at liberty 
to set out on his cherished mission to Japan. He takes with 
him Angeroo. or rather Paul, and after a short stay at his 
old quarters in Malacca, arrives in Japan, in August. 1549. 
I can tell you little indeed of the details of Xavier s labours 
here : but I must say that had he done nothing else but what 
he did in Japan he would have been the most wonderful of 
all missionaries. It is indeed by this Mission that he is 
best known in Europe. All this country had only been 
known to the Portuguese seven years, and there was nothing 
of Christianity in it when Xavier arrived. The Japanese 
were then, and are now, a loquacious, sharp-witted, luxurious, 
busy people: social, mercurial: Athenian., superstitious ex- 
tremely. Indeed, never could a country be more wholly given 
up to idolatry with all fervour of worship than was Japan 
when Xavier entered it. It contained innumerable temples 
of innumerable deities. Xo time is to be lost. Having 
learnt by unwearied application on the voyage a little 



FRANCIS XAVTER. 97 

Japanese from his noble convert (at whose house he now is 
lodged), Xavier translates the Apostle's Creed and an expo- 
sition of it, and distributes copies : in time he preaches short 
Sermons. His convert procures him an audience of the 
King, who permits him to teach. But he soon withdraws 
his patronage, and Xavier goes to Firando, in 1550, leaving 
Paul with the converts, and a Translation of the Life of 
our Saviour taken entirely from the Gospels. His way of 
travelling would have struck you as strange; he travelled on 
foot, and barefoot : carrying all that belonged to him in the 
world on his back. A strange sight truly was this toiling 
travel-worn man : no carriage of any kind nor servant : no 
state, no pomp, no comfort even : literally of Apostolic guise. 
All he had on earth was a mat to sleep on and a wallet : a 
few papers and a cruciform staff, and the sacred symbols and 
their vessels. And had you seen him pacing wearily and 
footsore, solitary yet singing, across the dreary and dangerous 
wastes of Japan, you could not but have called to mind, in 
spite of some strange differences, the noble prototype of all 
Missionaries, minding himself to go afoot from Troas unto 
Assos. He had long been accustomed to endure hardness as 
a good Soldier of the Cross. Forty hours had he once been 
drifting on a plank : rivers he had forded, and unbroken 
forests he had forced his way through: he had been nigh 
unto death through sickness and the sword: but nowhere 
had he suffered so much as here : from perils and privations, 
from cold and nakedness, from hunger and from homeliness. 
But though his sufferings were great he loved the service — 
nay, I believe I may say he loved the suffering : for he seems 
never to have thanked God more heartily than when he was 
called upon to undergo all hardship for the name of Christ. 
He bears all not only as a man but as a Christian : and not 
only as a Christian but as a Saint. He goes on preaching 
from town to town, just as we read of the first apostles, 

G 



98 FKANCIS XAVIER. 

taking with him two of the Society as helpers, and two 
Japanese Christians. When persecuted in one city they flee 
unto another : and despite all opposition Xavier keeps preach- 
ing : and baptisms follow his preachings wherever they halt 
awhile, and catechisings, and public disputations, and con- 
versions. Influence of some kind — we hope it is virtue — 
goes out of him wherever he goes. He translates portions 
of the Litany, organises societies, erects chapels, worships 
publicly : becomes all things to all men that he may gain 
some : ordains elders in almost every city : and writes letters 
to his converts and fellow-labourers at a distance, of which 
some portions are almost apostolic. His sanctity does as 
much as his sermons : and his companions are helps meet 
for him, displaying the peculiar virtues of the Christian in 
the midst of danger and reproach of all kinds ; and when he 
leaves the mission in their hands, as he does shortly, he does 
so with the confidence that the unparalleled efforts and suc- 
cesses of the Past are but as the first-fruits of the Future. 
Xavier sails for India, the 20th of November, 1551. 

On his return to Malacca we find him full of another mis- 
sionary enterprise — grander than any that either he or any 
one else had yet conceived — the carrying of the Cross into 
China. Such a thing in Xavier's time was unthought of, 
or if considered, practically pronounced utterly hopeless : and 
every imaginable argument and influence is now tried to 
dissuade him from it. But Xavier was not a man whom 
mere difficulty would deter. A scruple of casuistry might 
have kept him from a permitted pleasure, but no armed 
legion would have kept him from an acknowledged duty. 
Think you that there was much that could deter a man who, 
on the occasion of his friends trying to dissuade him from 
going to the Cannibal Islands of Del Moro, writes thus : 
You tell me that they will certainly kill me : well, I trust if 
they do, it will be gain for me to die. But whatever torments 



FRANCIS XAVIER. 99 

or death they may prepare for me, I am ready to suffer a 
thousand times as much for the salvation of one soul. I 
remember the words of Jesus Christ, Whosoever shall lose his 
life for My sake, shall find it: I believe them, and am content 
on these terms to hazard my life for the name of the Lord 
Jesus. They urge other ills, Cannibalism : he says, Though 
the evils yon speak of are great, the evil of being afraid of them 
is greater. I leave it to Him who has put it into my heart to 
preach His Gospel to preserve me from them, or not, as He 
will : the only thing I fear is not to dare enough for Him 
who has endured so much for me. They tell him that to 
preach the Gospel to Cannibals is hopeless: he replies, 
Whatever they are, are they not God's creatures ? Did not 
Christ die for them? Who then shall dare to limit the 
power of our God who is all-mighty 1 Or of the love of 
our Redeemer who is all-merciful ? Are there in the world, 
think you, any hearts hard enough to resist God's Spirit, if. 
it shall please Him to try to soften and to change them? 
Can they successfully oppose that gentle yet commanding 
influence which can make even dry bones live ? Shall He 
who has provided for subjecting the whole world to the Cross, 
shall He exempt this petty corner of the earth, that it shall 
receive no benefit from His atonement ? Verily, no : And if 
these Islands abounded in spices and in gold, Christians 
would have courage enough to go thither ; no danger would 
deter them then : they are now cowardly because there are 
only souls to gain. Oh, while I can do anything to prove 
the contrary, it never shall be said that Charity is less daring 
than Avarice, or that the love of Christ is not as constrain- 
ing as the love of Gold. Verily such a man as this it is not 
easy for the worldly to deal with. He and they have no 
common measure of motive, of principle, or of end. 

In this present instance of the Chinese mission, Xavier is 
as invincible and as invulnerable as of old. But himself 



100 FRANCIS XAVIER* 

believing — though full of ulterior schemes — that it may pro- 
bably be a mission unto death, he determines to visit once 
more some of the churches which he has planted, and espe- 
cially to set his College in order. So he returns to Goa. 
Here he finds all relating to the missions prospering beyond 
hope. He now devotes himself to a considerable re-organiza- 
tion of all ecclesiastical and collegiate matters there. He 
gives himself up entirely for a while to the care of the 
surrounding churches which have become multiplied con- 
siderably by the labours of the missionaries which he has 
sent out. He also lectures occasionally at the College to the 
missionary students and the clergy of Goa, and when the 
time of his departure is at hand, takes most affectionate leave 
of them all, and leaves them a legacy of counsel which 
contains passages of exceeding wisdom and very singular 
beauty. 

Xavier sets sail for Malacca in the spring of 1552. 
On landing he finds it visited with a plague. Here that 
knowlege of medicine you remember he was acquiring 
before he left Europe is of signal service. He ministers 
to the sick as laboriously as a slave, as affectionately 
as a brother : and is preserved from all harm himself: 
by his courage perhaps as much as by his skill. As 
soon as the sickness abates he is engaged in a scheme of a 
commercial embassy, which it is arranged he shall accom- 
pany. After tedious waiting, this scheme fails : but not so 
the zeal of Xavier. But he will trust no more to diplomacy : 
he will go on in his old way. So he sets sail for the Island 
of Sancian, which lies over against Macao, where the Portu- 
guese are allowed to trade with China. Here he seeks for 
some means of passage to the Chinese shore : but all think 
the danger of so doing so great to himself — and what is of 
more consequence to them, to their trade — that he cannot 
get any one to allow him to go over in their ship. At 



FRANCIS XAVIER. 101 

length, after many fruitless efforts, he engages at an exorbi- 
tant price a ship with a small crew — to do what, do you 
think? — to land him on some desolate part of the Chinese 
coast, and there leave him, taking themselves back again. 
The Portuguese of Sancian hear of it, and thwart even this. 
His interpreter too deserts him : and now he is utterly help- 
less. He falls sick. On his recovery he hears that the King 
of Siam is going to send an embassy to China : he attempts 
to accompany the Ambassador, as one of his suite : but the 
whole thing fails. His fever returns : he has a premonition 
of death. He goes on board the ship used as the hospital of 
"he town, that he may die as the meanest of his brethren: 
mt finding his devotions hindered more here than elsewhere, 
he begs to be set ashore again. And there on the sands he 
now lies dying in the open eye of heaven — uncared for by 
those whom his own hands had fed, untended by those whom 
he had ministered to as a slave. A sailor takes him to a 
shed which he makes with poles and tarpauling. And so in 
that crazy hut, on the shores of the Chinese Waters — amid 
the howling winds of December, and in communion only 
with his Maker — with imperfect utterance of the lips, but 
most eloquent expression of the eye — might you have heard 
the last words of Francis Xavier: In Thee, Lord, have I 
trusted : let me not be confounded for ever. And there lay 
his corpse for months — in Chinese fashion buried — in a large 
chest of unslaked lime, sweetly smiling as in life ; a memento 
to the thoughtless, a mystery to the thoughtful; until it was 
carried with pomp and loud weeping to receive the solemn 
rites of Christian burial in the Church and College of that 
city which owed all its spiritual life to his Christian sanctity 
and zeal. 

And now what have we here in this man which has a 
lesson for ourselves ? Much every w r ay. We have before 
us the idea of a Missionary of the Gospel realised in a 



102 FRANCIS XAVIER. 

greater degree than I know of any where but in the Inspired 
Records of our Faith. We have an instance of a young 
man and a noble man renouncing pleasure and preferment 
to take up the Cross : of a Sadducee becoming a Saint : of a 
Collegiate Professor converted to do the work of an Evange- 
list. We have a remarkable instance of sanctity and self- 
sacrifice united with charity and zeal ; and this alone is an 
approximation to the distinctive character of a Christian 
Apostle. Power of endurance and meekness beyond ordinary 
men were also conspicuous in Xavier : and these again are 
noble and apostolic qualities. The most marvellous self- 
control was his — ever enabling him to calm a fiery nature 
into acquiescence in insult, and to submit to open shame 
with no other change of countenance than a smile, with no 
other utterance of the lips than a prayer. An uniformly 
cheerful man was he, always courteous, gentle, and genial : 
of the Pauline school. He had sold himself, or rather had 
surrendered himself, once for all to work good in the sight of 
the Lord all his days : and so he never felt himself his own, 
but Christ's and his brethren : and thus toil and affliction of 
all kinds he counted his ordinary state ; absence of suffering 
was his highest pleasure, and repose his only indulgence. 
And joined to these singular passive virtues was a peculiar 
continuous zeal, inspiring without inflaming him — manifest- 
ing itself rather by a fuller and more living development of the 
ordinary graces of the Christian character than by any par- 
tial or irregular outbreaks : so that you could not say that 
he was extravagant in any way, at the same time that you 
could not deny that he was altogether extraordinary. For a 
model of severe piety relieved by unceasing charity; of 
asceticism without gloom, and yielding gentleness never 
spoiled by insincerity — I know not where to point you in 
these later ages better than to Francis Xavier. A man 
whose life was passed in spiritual conflicts and consolations, 



FRANCIS XAVIER. 103 

in continual contemplation and all the fluctuations of 
the interior life — full of holy thoughts and emphatically a 
man of prayer — was Francis Xavier: a man upon whom 
the Invisible was more influential than the Visible: with 
whom you can connect no selfish, mean, or mercenary pur- 
pose : a man in whom is no error but of Creed, in whom is 
no excess but of Zeal. True indeed it is that Xavier was a 
man but of average intellect : nay, perhaps he was of the 
least comprehensive faculties that we can imagine as consist- 
ing with such confessedly fine moral qualities. He had no 
theoretic truth to teach: no speculative gospel to preach. 
He was the minister only of a Worship, the herald only of 
Facts. Nothing indeed could well be poorer than the way 
in which he thought about many great things, nothing worse 
than the notions he had of some spiritual things. But with 
all this mental poverty there was marvellous moral greatness 
about him ; and even he, as other great men, was as it were 
possessed by an Aim which dignified fcis whole life — an Idea 
as I so often call it — an idea of the expansive and adaptive 
power of the Gospel of Christ ; how it was capable of spread- 
ing indefinitely, and accommodating itself equally to all sorts 
and conditions of men ; and how for this end no inflexible 
scheme of worldly means was requisite or expedient, but that 
rather the elasticity and subtlety which are the attributes of 
spirit were alone necessary and sufficient. Yes, a noble 
instance I think is Xavier of a man working a spiritual aim 
only by spiritual means ; an admirable example and proof of 
how spirit is the most powerful agent upon spirit, and that 
money and pomp and power are but subordinate in the cause 
of the Gospel when compared with prayer and sanctity and 
zeal. Ay, behold Francis Xavier with his sling and his 
stone — his Faith and his Creed — going forth to fight the 
Goliath of Japanese heathenism, and returning, if not with 
the total rout of the Philistines, yet with the hope of victory 



104 FRANCIS XAVIER. 

and a lesson of the way to win it, and then learn that it is 
not money or mechanism or both that can regenerate the 
world, but only and emphatically Men. Truly the story of 
Xavier teaches us that it is Spiritual Men that the world 
needs most. These are its truest blessings : with these 
almost all things are possible — without them little. Yes, it 
teaches that Man is God's main instrument for acting upon 
man for good : and it also suggests, that soul imparting itself 
to soul — a mystic miraculous effluence and interchange of 
mind — spiritual magnetism — is not this a Reality — one of 
the most considerable of Realities? Explain the sudden 
enthusiasm of multitudes if you can without it : a Panic, a 
Crusade, a National Insurrection : the momentary miracles 
which Oratory has worked: the wonderful permanent con- 
versions of character which have been almost instantaneously 
made by the personal exertions of Apostles of Truth : or even 
only the Acts of Xavier. 

Many other lessons, too, does this story of Xavier teach 
us as to the work of regenerating the world by Christian 
influences. For instances ; That the most efficient mode of 
missionary exertions is, that Missionaries should be the 
ministers of a Church emphatically, and not only of a volun- 
tary association — representatives of a worshipping, and not 
merely of a worldly society: That the first thing to do to 
propagate Christianity in heathen lands is to Christianise the 
Christians : That the main hope of permanent and extensive 
success in establishing Christian churches in foreign lands 
is in the education of native Christians for their ministers : 
That among the rudest men, letters or books are not the only 
teachers of truth, or necessarily the best : but that symbols 
of all kinds — though hurtful for men who ought to be full- 
grown — may be appropriate instruments for challenging the 
attention and instructing the ignorance of those who are 
children in understanding ; or at the least, That the illustra- 



FRANCIS XAVIER. 105 

tion of Doctrine by regular Visible Worship is indispensable. 
It would seem also, that to form churches in the large cities 
principally, as the Apostles did, and to unite a present im- 
provement of condition in this world with the promise of 
perfect happiness in the word to come, is most expedient. 

But what, you may say, was the real spiritual good which 
Xavier did ? what the net Christian result of all his labours? 
It might be sufficient to reply, that the answer to these ques- 
tions is not to our present purpose : what Xavier attempted 
to do — what his aims were, and what his principles of action 
— is all with which we are concerned in estimating his cha- 
racter. Success is no measure of worth : Spiritual results are 
emphatically in the hands of One whose ways of working are 
past finding out. But one need not content oneself with 
saying only what is sufficient : one may also say, that as a 
missionary he was apparently the most successful of any of 
whom we have record. Deducting v^ry largely from the 
accounts which are current of him, we may yet say that he 
did more evangelical work than has yet been done in 
heathen lands by any one man. And why I think much of 
it was good work, well done — is this : that the churches which 
he founded have yielded more martyrs for the Faith of Christ 
than all other churches founded by modern missionaries 
taken together. And the remnants of his work which are 
standing at this day seem to attest that it was not alto- 
gether his fault that more of it had not stood and gathered 
strength until now. The fact I believe is, that Xavier's 
successors were not such as he : they perverted his prin- 
ciples, and they degenerated from his zeal: they were latterly 
not only not saintly men but scarcely even Christian : and 
with the personal Christianity of the minister such evangeli- 
cal work as this will ever correspondingly decline. But for 
some while Xavier's zeal must have been propagated among 
his successors, for we find the state of the churches which he 



106 FRANCIS XAVIER. 

founded for some time very flourishing. For instance, 
thirteen years after the death of Xavier there appear to 
have been three hundred thousand Christians in Goa and its 
dependencies. In all that neighbourhood his memory was 
reverenced among the heathen as Schwartz's elsewhere : and 
for a century you might have heard Xavier's Hymns sung by 
the boys in the market-places from Meliapore to Molucca, and 
his Litanies chanted as the vesper worship of many a soul 
between the poor Paravas of the Pearl Coast, and the fisher- 
men of the Chinese Waters. And as to Japan, we find 
three kings who had received baptism (with most of their 
subjects) from Xavier and his immediate successors, sending 
ambassadors of obedience to Pope Gregory in 1582. When 
the great Revolution took place (which forms an era in 
Japanese history — changing at once the dynasty and the 
constitution) there were said to have been there four hundred 
thousand Christians, and two hundred and fifty Christian 
Churches, and three Colleges : and the great persecution of 
Christians, which under the new constitution shortly fol- 
lowed, has added eight hundred martyrs to the Romish 
Calendar. Such accounts as these are probably very highly 
overstated : but let what will be deducted even by controver- 
sial incredulity, they will justify the dispassionate in hoping 
that the evangelical result was not inconsiderable. Doubt- 
less there are very sad thoughts which connect themselves 
with all Xavier's teaching: there is a large mixture of 
superstition in the best of it : it is scarcely ever the pure 
Gospel that he preaches. Truly that river of the water of 
life which runs clear as crystal through the New Testament 
would seem often fearfully poisoned by Xavier's unscriptural 
infusions : and perhaps fatally so for us who have tasted it 
from baptism in its purity : but whether such was the case 
with those whose spiritual constitution was quite otherwise 
from birth — may be doubtfully suggested. It would seem 



FRANCIS XAVIER. 107 

at least, if we would think of it, no unreasonable thing to 
hope, no wrong thing to, believe, that even the adulterated 
waters of Xavier's Gospel might yet retain so much of their 
essential life-giving virtue, as not to be at least so unwhole- 
some as the natural streams of India and Japan. There is 
something Christian in the Litanies and the Hymns which 
he taught the majority of his converts : and if that saying be 
considered wise, Let me make the Songs of a people and any 
one may make their Laws, it might perhaps be not alto- 
gether untrue also to say, If the Prayers of a people be 
Christian, it may matter less what may be their Opinions. 
But rating as low as we may Xavier's doctrinal teaching, 
we must not forget that he was not only a Teacher : he was 
most emphatically a Minister — a servant of servants to his 
brethren. There was nothing which he dW not do — there 
was nothing which he did not endure — for their sake. And 
therefore I would suggest that the happiness which he con- 
ferred on countless numbers of the sick, the desolate, and the 
poor — the unceasing devotion of his life to acts of spiritual 
blessing and to the exercise of those charities the worth of 
which all acknowledge — yea, the great fact of continuously 
regarding his life as a sacrifice of service to his fellow-men, 
and deeming every moment of it lost which was not em- 
ployed in necessary self-sustenance or in the communication 
of the highest good he knew of — these things, I say, should 
be put into the opposite scale to that in which lie heaped 
his mental infirmities, would we justly estimate the weight 
and worth of Xavier's character. 

But Xavier was a Romanist. 

He was, and a very strict one too. And so have been 
some of the holiest men of whom the Christian Church bears 
record : and it ought to be a very great delight to us to 
know that such is the case — that in a Church seeming so 
corrupt there is yet some vigour of life: that so large a 



108 FRANCIS XAVIER. 

portion of those who surname themselves by the name of 
Christ is not utterly deserted by His Spirit. Sad, most sad, 
would it be to think otherwise : and surely I may assume 
that your faith in your own Church is so firm that there is 
little danger of lessening it by reminding you that in the 
Church from which it separated there has been a good man and 
a great man now and then, as elsewhere everywhere. No one 
can be more anxious to preach to you the Faith of Christ as 
it is not preached in the Church of Rome than I am : nor 
shall I ever hesitate earnestly to protest, at fitting seasons, 
against very many of its doctrines. Assuredly the general 
practical influence of the Church of Rome, as I have seen it 
in Ireland and in some parts of Europe, appears to me but a 
very ambiguous blessing : and I feel sure that much of its 
Theoretic Creed is essentially Antichristian. But the most 
energetic opposition to it in these respects I feel to be quite 
consistent with the heartiest recognition of the superior piety 
of many of its individual members. And Xavier I reckon 
one such. Certainly I never could wish to see the truth of 
Christ taught verbally as Xavier taught it : I mentally 
dissent from almost every other sentence that I read of his. 
But at the same time I think I see present throughout 
almost every record of him a noble, unworldly, self-sacrificing 
soul : and there are certainly detached sayings and acts of 
his than which I know nothing more Christian. Wherefore 
believing as I do that it is not faith in Doctrine that makes 
a Christian so mu2h as it is faith in Christ, and feeling 
deeply impressed by Xavier's history throughout that (in the 
main) he lived a life of faith on the Son of God, and (in the 
main) sincerely sought not his own glory but His whose 
minister he professed to be, it is not his theoretical errors 
which shall keep me from honouring his memory. I believe 
that the love of God and of his neighbour constrained Xavier 
to do what he did, and that in taking up his cross daily he 



FRANCIS XAVIER. 109 

meant to follow Christ : and I also believe that being and 
doing thus — thus loving God and following Christ, thus 
blessing his brethren and disciplining himself — his heavenly 
Master is able to raise him up and make him stand, albeit 
he be Romanist or more. And believing as I do believe all 
this, I feel no hesitation in holding him up to you as a man 
who, despite all his lamentable errors of belief and all his 
distressing infirmities of superstition, is one whom we 
should ever speak of with reverence, and find fault with 
only when obliged. Let the man who has Xavicr's sanctity 
and self-devotion, let him if he will fling stones at his 
statue. But let him who has neither — who cares little for 
his own soul and less for his neighbour's — let that man hold 
his peace. Let him, too, who is willing to subscribe with his 
hand to a purer creed, and is not willing to confess with his 
life the same holy cause : who is ready with any homage of 
the lips but with no service of the spirit — let him hold his 
peace. Ay, let every one of us, brethren, here in this room 
be dumb: we who live in ceiled houses comfortably while 
Xavier wandered about houseless and homeless to preach 
Christ to the heathen — we who deny ourselves but little at 
most, and have no real hardships to bear arising from our 
profession of Christ's faith, while Xavier hazarded his life 
daily for the name of the Lord Jesus — we who live in the 
midst of all we love, and have friends and relatives on this 
side and on that, while Xavier, noble by birth and educated 
a scholar, gives up all that was dear to him in the world to 
go to the very ends of the earth out of love to his Invisible 
Benefactor and zeal for the salvation of his brethren. It is 
not for us, or such as us, to speak slightingly of Xavier. 
They only who have Xavier's zeal for the Gospel are 
qualified to judge him for his want of knowledge of it: all 
others should only the rather be admonished by Xavier's 
story, to take heed to themselves, lest it should be found 



110 FRANCIS XAVTER. 

hereafter that he is less beloved by his Master who knowg 
His will adequately and does it tardily, than he who knows 
it less perfectly and does it readily — he who slumbers or 
stands idle in the sunshine than he who works in a twilight 
in which no other man would work. 

But Xavier was a Jesuit. 

He was, and one of the first of them. Certainly the 
Jesuits have in three centuries acquired and deserved a bad 
name : but in order to form a just judgment in this matter 
you must recollect that the Jesuits were far different in 
Xavier's days from what they have been in later times. A 
self-constituted order always degenerates. The disciples of 
a sect are never so good as their founder. The first Jesuits 
were some of the noblest men of their time — the men who 
made the greatest sacrifices for the good of their brethren. 
Indeed they were men not lightly to be thought of — men on 
whom I beg you for a few moments to meditate. 

I have already told you that their Founder was no 
ordinary man. spiritually as well as mentally: a man of 
intense devotion, in health often longing for Death, and 
praying for it sometimes with tears of hope : a very practical 
man, rejecting all formalities, and devoting himself in every 
way, unreservedly and incessantly, to preaching and con- 
fession, the visitation of the sick, and the education of 
youth. You will not readily read anywhere more, thought- 
ful or heart-searching words than you will find in the Spiri- 
tual Exercises of Ignatius. No one seems to have taught 
before him so emphatically the necessity of frequent silent 
self-communion for the effectual discharge of all ordinary as 
well as extraordinary duties; and he made it a law of his 
Society that eight days in every year each member should 
live in solitude and silence — devoting so long at least to the 
mysterious study of himself. Himself of cool, clear head : 
both legislative and judicial: full of heart-knowledge; 



FRANCIS XAVIER. Ill 

imaginative extraordinarily yet of temperament unexcitable 
save in Prayer — the exercises he enjoined were singularly 
severe : but notwithstanding he was no formalist, and no 
fanatic : rather when Form and Fanaticism were all-powerful, 
he plainly taught that Self-denial was more valuable than 
either, and Charity than all. And as to his practical 
talents, the organization of his Order shews us that had he 
continued in his original warfare he might have been a 
General of any magnitude. But he did nobler things than 
this. He it was that aroused Catholic Christendom to a 
sense of Missionary duties. He himself sent missionaries 
to Asia and Brazil, to North America and to South: and 
his zeal it was that gave rise to extensive missions by the 
Dominicans in China, the Franciscans in Tartary, the 
Theatins in Armenia, Persia, and Sumatra, the Sulpicians 
in Montreal. He founded too at Rome the first Jews' 
Society, the first Magdalene Asylum, the first Orphan House 
on record. 

And the early character of Loyola's Society — the Com- 
pany of Jesus — the Jesuits — is as remarkable as that of its 
founder. These men were the Reformers of the Church of 
Rome, after their kind : doing that at least for its organiza- 
tion which Luther did for its doctrine: only, so far from 
separating from it, being its most earnest upholders. To 
regenerate Catholicism, not in any way to destroy it, was 
their aim : and in this they succeeded so rapidly as that even 
Ignatius himself was a very considerable, though indirect, 
opponent of Luther's. Surely it was a grand attempt, this 
of striving to repair the colossal ruin of Rome : it would have 
seemed easier to destroy and to rebuild : but the elaborate 
attempt these Jesuits made, and Rome stands till now ap- 
parently as firmly as ever. They were no ordinary enthusiasts : 
but rejecting all kinds of theoretical systems they adhered 
inseparably to the practical, and soon became distinguished 



112 FEANCIS XAVIER. 

by inflexible devotion to their end, and unscrupulous versa- 
tility as to their means. They did not concern themselves 
much with the Bible : the Institutions of the Church were 
their main instruments of warfare, though from time to time 
singularly enforced or dispensed with, by the introduction of 
the authority of ecstasies and impulses, asserted revelations 
and fancied intuitions. Preachers to the poor, advocates of 
the people — singularly self-denying and unweariedly cha- 
ritable, they secured the applause of the many : eloquent 
and learned, they gained possession of the pulpit and the 
press, the confessional and the college : missionaries empha- 
tically, they professedly pervaded every land : and strongly 
sustained by Papal authority, they rapidly produced so great 
a reformation in the Church of Rome that degenerate 
Protestantism was in many cases overcome by regenerate 
Catholicism. 

But whatever may be thought of the conduct of the early 
Jesuits it can really little affect our estimate of the character 
of Xavier. For the rules of the Society were not formed 
when he left Europe for India, and it had not then done a 
single act. He only became a Jesuit by putting into 
Loyola's hands an anticipatory subscription to whatever 
should be sanctioned by the Pope : and never had any part 
or voice practically in any of their proceedings. Loyola and 
he never met in this world after the day on which they met 
last together in the presence of the Pope at Rome ; and any 
man's influence over another, one would think, must be very 
materially modified when only exercised through an inter- 
vening distance of fifteen thousand miles. 

On the whole then I should say of Xavier that he is in a 
very noble sense a Great Man: of small mind but of great 
soul j a man of extraordinary daring and endurance ; doing 
and suffering great things for an unselfish, unworldly aim. 
Infirm doubtless intellectually, and of very questionable 



FRANCIS XAVIER. 113 

verbal creed, but with an Evangelical, Apostolic, Pauline 
heart in him. Severe only towards his own sins, and 
allowing others indulgences and excuses which he never 
tolerated a moment for himself: of singular persuasiveness 
and of the finest temper : fearless yet gentle : he won men to 
the Faith by his remarkable union of an example of sanctity 
and of a preaching of love. In wisdom of manner, the very 
model for a modern missionary: and indeed in spirit: for 
missionary enterprise was with Xavier almost as influential 
an impulse as that of discovery was with Columbus. His 
whole soul was absorbed by it : it haunted him sleeping and 
awake : so that those words which had been treasured up as 
uttered by him in sleep with exceeding earnestness before he 
became a missionary might well serve for his motto to the 
latest moment of his life : Of sufferings and of labours for 
the Cross, yet more, Lord, yet more. And as signs of an 
Apostle were wrought in him while he lived — in labours 
most abundant, in deaths oft ; once was he stoned, thrice he 
suffered shipwreck, a night and a day was he in the deep ; 
in journeyings often; in perils of robbers, in perils by his 
own countrymen, in perils by the heathen ; in perils in the 
wilderness, in perils in the waters : in weariness and painful- 
ness, in watchings often, in hunger and thirst ; in fastings 
often, in cold and nakedness; besides those things which 
came upon him daily, the care of all his churches — I think 
he has well earned the title by which he was canonised after 
death — The Apostle of the Indies — and has made good his 
claim to be enrolled among the Great Men of Christendom. 



PETEE OF EUSSIA. 



The man whose Story and Character I am to lay before you 
this evening is a man in my opinion essentially great, but 
one differing in such material points from any of those whom 
I have brought before you on former occasions, that a few 
preparatory words of explanation seem necessary. He was 
not characteristically a Christian, and scarcely in any way 
emphatically a Religious man. Herein is a grand point of 
difference. But he was characteristically and emphatically a 
man daring and enduring much for the good of others : de- 
voting his whole life continuously and consistently to one grand 
and good Cause, the Formation of an Empire: a man who 
deliberately and courageously, at immeasurable cost of toil 
and self-denial, influenced permanently for good the destinies 
of millions of his fellow-men. Herein are considerable points 
of resemblance : and hereby is he brought within my defini- 
tion of a Great Man. He was no missionary of truth, as 
Xavier : no enthusiast for practical science, as Columbus : 
no apostle of a neglected gospel, as Luther. But, as Xavier, 
he had unweariable Zeal : as Columbus, he had consistency 
of self-devotion to a Cause : as Luther, the essential spirit 
of a Reformer. He might have lived peacefully and luxuri- 



PETER OF RUSSIA. 115 

ously, if he had lived as others : but he chose to live storm- 
fully and hardly, that he might teach others to live better. 
There was greatness here and some goodness. But I can 
assure you that I am not going to hold up to you Peter of 
Russia as in any way a model man : not as one who is 
altogether entitled to your praise or very well deserving of 
your imitation : very far from it indeed : I rather bring him 
before you this evening to try to shew you something of how 
we must judge of one who was placed by God in circum- 
stances the most different conceivable from our own : and to 
exhibit to you an instance of a man from whose faults we 
may learn as milch as from the virtues of many ordinary 
men. Peter of Russia was confessedly and indisputably an 
exceedingly imperfect character, wanting the very foundation 
for any such character, self-control : but still, imperfect as 
he is, there is that in him and about him nevertheless which 
heightens our conceptions of the capabilities of our common 
nature : and while my own habits of thought and feeling 
naturally lead me to dwell with the greatest pleasure on the 
characters of those who have been distinguished for the very 
qualities in which Peter was deficient, I would desire to be 
able to appreciate justly and even generously the achieve- 
ments of men the most alien from my own peculiar pursuits 
and too narrow sympathies. Whatever renders us more 
Catholic without rendering us less Christian I deem a good : 
and a contribution towards this end is contemplated in this 
Evening's Lecture. 

There is much about the early life of Peter which you 
ought to bear in mind in appreciating his character, but 
which I cannot enter into this evening : I must presume that 
you recollect it. I will however just remind you, that he was 
when young not only not kept from the vices of youth but 
deliberately and designedly led into them — being made to 
commit the vices from which others are anxiously guarded ; 



116 PETER OF RUSSIA. 

and that physically he was most peculiarly constructed; — 
subject to most strange fits and convulsions, and generally of 
the rudest animal nature almost conceivable. His father 
died when he was four years old, and in the earlier period of 
his boyhood he was left to do exactly as he liked : and he 
liked to do the strangest things : in fact he was the rudest, 
roughest, wildest, most ungovernable boy in his dominions. 
He was not an idle pleasure-loving vanity-hunting boy 
either : he was beyond all other boys vigorous in mind 
and body : always ready for schemes of danger and 
of daring : most hardy, most restless : scarcely able to 
read, yet planning improvements in all filings about him : 
able to do many things, willing to learn nothing : a 
capital carpenter, a miserable scholar : in fact, just what you 
may fancy a better kind of barbarian boy to be : tall, large- 
made, good-looking ; full of force, full of passion : capricious 
beyond bearing, yet equally kind as cruel : acting always on 
impulse : untameable but not altogether lawless. Such is he 
when he marries at seventeen. His marriage is disliked by 
his half-sister Sophia : and she with others of her party get 
up an insurrection — which fails, and his sister is henceforth 
confined to a convent. But when this tumult is over, Peter 
does not interfere much more than before in State matters : 
he leaves all to a Council. There are frequent outbreaks 
for years : but he goes on amusing himself and instructing 
himself, keeping himself out of the way when there is any 
unusual disturbance going on : removing from the Kremlin 
to a neighbouring Convent and back again, as the degree of 
disturbance may be. And thus he goes on till his poor half- 
brother John (who is joint Tsar with himself —but both 
bodily and mentally most infirm) dies, and he is twenty-four 
years old; that is, until 1696. 

And now Peter steps up to the undivided throne of Mus- 
covy, and seated there he fills it. He throws off that reck- 



PETER OF RUSSIA. 117 

lessness and indifference, which was in a measure but a mask 
worn for safety's sake, and resolves to be a King. With 
unrestricted authority to command and innumerable multi- 
tudes to obey, he plans the creation of an empire which it 
shall satisfy him to rule. All things indeed and all men 
around him are as bad as can be : but his father, he remem- 
bers, had been a Reformer before him, and so will he be : 
nay, his father had reformed much, he will reform more. 
His father had introduced, and encouraged, and employed 
some foreigners : he will introduce, and encourage, and employ 
many. His father's plans it is true had in a great measure 
failed from the hatred which the Muscovites had to foreign 
innovations : Peter will try them again, and see whether his 
subjects or himself are the stronger. Why should not his 
kingdom be an empire, his barbaric multitudes a great People ? 
There is no reason obvious to a hasty, yet piercing glance. 
But, spoiled child as he is, he knows enough to know that to 
do such work as he is thinking of requires a far-seeing as 
well as a quick-sighted eye — circumspection as well as pene- 
tration ; so Peter looks steadily about him from such height 
as the throne of Muscovy can give him. And the first tiling 
that he sees is, that if Muscovy is to be only physically as it 
is, it will not do for an empire. He sees that for any nation 
to have influence in Europe it must have a direct communica- 
tion with the Sea, the open sea. The first thing then that 
Peter must have is a Sea Port : he must have Ships, too — 
ships in the Volga for the Turks, ships in the Gulf of Fin- 
land for the Swedes. Peter has neither Port nor Ship ; but 
he will have both. But how ? Why, he will take and make 
them. But how ? Why, with his own hands. Was ever 
such a thing heard of ? No : but what of that ? Self-help 
is no bad thing for any man, not even for a king. So thinks 
Peter : and so he begins boat-building, and sets others to 
work too. While he was living in obscurity during his 



118 PETER OP RUSSIA. 

brother John's lifetime I told you he was not living in idle- 
ness. No, he had been carpentering half his time : he had 
been sailing, and rowing, and spending much time on the 
water: from hating the very sight of water he had got to 
like it so much as to be even passionately fond of it. And 
so now when he had got a great project in view of making 
himself an empire — an empire which should assume a high 
place among the nations of Europe — he turns his boating 
propensities to profit. He foresees that he must, in order to 
accomplish his purpose, make great demands on the efforts of 
his subjects : and therefore he determines to set them an ex- 
ample of what effort will do in himself. Wherefore, absolute 
prince as he is, he turns himself into a master shipbuilder : 
nay, even often into a task-working shipwright. In a very 
short time he has half a dozen good- sized vessels about him : 
and he tries sailing with them on a large lake of his, 180 
miles round. But he soon tires of this kind of playing at 
sailoring : he must out to the sea : and so off he sets to 
Archangel and buys a ship of a Dutch trader there, and is off 
for Lapland as its Captain. Never was such a man in a 
ship: he is captain and sailor, helmsman, cabin-boy, and 
everything : nothing daunts him : the higher the storm, the 
happier he: and to all the prudent suggestions of his fol- 
lowers he only says, Never fear : Who ever heard of a Tsar 
being drowned? — Well, but Peter is not a man only to 
amuse himself; he must get some practical good out of his 
amusements, otherwise they are no pleasures to him : so 
when he comes back he determines to learn thoroughly the 
whole duty of a sailor, and to pass through every grade. He 
takes a great liking to a pleasant old Dutch skipper (a native 
of a place called Saardam) and goes to sea with him for a 
short while, and on board his ship goes through all the gra- 
dations of a sailor's life ; so that now you might see the Tsar 
of Muscovy, absolute prince of a great kingdom, scrubbing 



PETER OF RUSSIA. 119 

the decks as earnestly as a poor fellow that would be whipped 
if he did not ; acting every way as cabin-boy and cook : fill- 
ing the skipper's pipe, mixing the skipper's grog : then as 
sailor up at the mast head, hauling and loosing the sails, 
and busy with all tackle : as helmsman, as mate, everything 
was he : and as he was in earnest in learning and in no way 
assuming, he was a prime favourite with all : and returned 
to Moscow with the increased conviction of the necessity of 
a Navy, and confidence that he could make one. 

But an army also he must have : an army like that of 
other nations, I mean, for a kind of army he had — multitudes 
of men at least calling themselves soldiers. Now the same 
way that he was doing in naval matters he had already be- 
gun to do also with military. He himself began at the begin- 
ning. Peter became a private in his own guards, and was 
drilled as one by his friend Le Fort, whom he had appointed 
captain. A remarkable man was this Le Fort : he had been 
a clerk in a merchant's house, or something like it ; but had 
attracted Peter's attention shortly after he came to the throne, 
and became a great favourite with him, and for years was 
his monitor and Mentor, and in every way his good genius : 
exercising a very humanising influence over him — saving 
him from the commission of many a crime, even at the risk 
of becoming as Clytus to Alexander. Well, with Le Fort for 
his drill-master and his own willingness of mind, he becomes 
an expert soldier, and thus learning himself, he is determined 
that his nobles shall learn too, and orders that no man shall 
be an officer who has not risen from the ranks, and that all 
places of honour and of profit shall be open only to those who 
can win them by their merits. Le Fort and he and a Gene- 
ral Gordon (a Scotchman), in a very short time organise 
some thousands of new troops in European fashion : for the 
Russian soldiers before Peter's time used to wear long dresses 
and beards — as the Turkish did till lately. Well, but an 



120 PETER OF RUSSIA. 

army and a navy, daily growing, must have food — must 
have work — must have wages. With Peter's notion of mak- 
ing an Empire he could find plenty of work for them, but 
how to make his money increase with his need for it — a 
commonly puzzling problem — this does not instantly appear 
to Peter. Le Fort however — who is admiral, general, privy 
counsellor, prime minister, everything to him — shews him 
the way: he points out to him with great wisdom — what 
will often succeed in other cases — many improvements of 
administration: they succeed and speedily double his re- 
sources. All things going on prosperously, the Tsar cannot 
stop here : all this is a mere means to an end : he must have 
a Port, as I have said : he would like to have that of Azoph 
best : not that it is of much value in itself, but it may be 
made so ; if he had a fleet there he should then have the 
command of the Black Sea : and if he had that, he should 
then be able to establish a profitable communication with 
Persia, through Circassia : and he should also gain a good 
position from which he might drive the Tartars out of the 
Crimea. So as a volunteer corporal in Le Fort's corps, to 
Azoph he goes. But impetuous Peter — no more than any 
other of us — cannot always get what he wants just when he 
wants it. He fails utterly now, and is obliged to go home 
again, portless. But Peter was not the man to sit down 
qnietly and be contented to be disappointed : not he : he was 
a spoilt child, but not in this way : no one cheerier under 
defeats than he, for none was ever more determined than he to 
try till he succeeded. He is obliged to be quiet awhile, for it 
is winter : so he employs himself with carrying on his mani- 
fold works of State. But the first thiug he does in the spring 
is to be off for Azoph again. Peter now determines to be 
for a while more than Corporal Peter : he will try to be 
General. And consulting with his friend Gordon, they devise 
the strangest, altogether unheard of, method of taking a . 



PETER OF RUSSIA. 121 

town. There is a deep wide ditch all round the town, and 
this baffles them : what is to be done ? Fill up the ditch 
you say. Certainly, but how? By spade and barrow? 
They have neither ; no tools of any kind but sword and 
musket. No such thing, say Peter and Gordon, all men 
have tools to do all kinds of work with, namely, heads and 
hands : and so they set 12,000 pairs of hands to work to 
scrape up earth, and they fill the ditch by handfuls in five 
weeks, and then they walk right over it (walls and all) into 
the town. So Peter this time gets what he wants, x4.zoph, 
a Port. He plans dockyards and a fleet, and thus planning 
goes homewards. As they reach Moscow there are all kinds 
of processions and rejoicings : everybody is there seemingly 
but the Tsar. And where is he ? Why, as he would have 
said, in his proper place : among the Corporals : for when he 
had done his General's work on special commission, he re- 
turned again to his place as an uncommissioned officer. 
However, for his bravery he was promoted to be Lieutenant 
— and I believe bore the honour meekly. Indeed Peter 
throughout all his life displayed as little vanity as perhaps 
was ever visible in any man : he was a very earnest and a 
very practical man — with very high ideas of what is great 
and what is practicable — and always active — and such men 
are ever least vain. 

Peter goes on reforming, and that in earnest : his reforms 
are hated. There is a conspiracy of some officers of the 
Strelitzes again : they wish to behead him : he is beforehand 
with them and beheads them. His conduct here, as else- 
where again and again, under like circumstances, seems sadly 
severe. But in whatever judgment is passed, it must not 
be forgotten, that when he had commenced reformer, the 
hatred of the nobles and even of the people was so great and 
so growing, that he must either annihilate his opponents or 
become their victim. He need not have become reformer at 



122 PETER OF RUSSIA. 

this price or of this kind, so radical an one ; but being this, he 
perhaps could scarcely have been an efficient one, without 
being somewhat more severe than would be necessary with a 
more civilised and less absolute constitution. 

But now all is quiet again : but Peter is not idle : he 
invites hundreds of Foreigners, especially Dutchmen, into 
Russia, and sends hundreds of Russians into Holland, Ger- 
many, and Italy, to learn all kinds of arts and manufactures. 
Nay, he does more than this : he resolves to go himself — and 
goes. But where ? To Holland. What for ? To improve 
himself in ship-carpentering, and other things by the bye. 
And early in the spring of the year you might have seen a 
strange spectacle on the Saardam canal— a rough-looking, 
shaggy, brawny personage dressed like a Dutch skipper in 
red jacket and canvas trousers, steering a little boat, talking 
loudly and shouting, boisterous and wild-seeming, with six 
or seven nearly as strange-looking men : down they come, 
and entering the lake they hail a man fishing, the steersman 
speaking to him as to an old friend, and with earnest glad- 
ness at the sight of him. The man is a blacksmith who 
once worked in a Russian dock — the hallooing steersman is 
Peter. Peter takes lodgings at the smith's, and is servant of 
all-work to himself. This place, Saardam, you will recollect 
was the place where Peter's old friend, on board whose ship 
he served as sailor at Archangel, came from. And the very 
first thing Peter does after he has got fairly into his lodg- 
ings, and unpacked his tools, is to go with the smith round 
the town, and look after all the families of the many Dutch- 
men that were working for him at ship-building in Russia, 
and to bring them news of their husbands and brothers, and 
to convey to them the kindest messages and money from the 
Tsar. This done he is down at the Saardam docks, and at 
work. And if you had been there and noticed a tall yet 
thickset man, with most intelligent but barbarian face : thick 



PETER OF RUSSIA. 123 

shaggy eyebrows, and short curly brown hair, matted : in 
his shirt sleeves, with adze in hand, slaving as hard as any 
two other of the workmen : uncouth yet not unskilful, hand- 
ling tools as one evidently not unused to them: rapid and 
rude in all his movements, and never in repose an instant : 
ever swinging his arms about with various effect : attracting 
attention, provoking a laugh, commanding respect : had you 
seen this man, I say, apparently earning a Hercules' meal 
by a Hercules' labour, you could not have hesitated a mo- 
ment in saying, There is the Tsar : there is the Tsar. All 
the time he is at Saardam he lives just as a common la- 
bourer of the dockyard. He lends a helping hand at every 
thing, at rope and sail making, at smithy work : his industry 
and his curiosity are unbounded: he visits every thing in 
Holland, and seems to understand almost at first sight every 
thing he sees. But his industry is not frivolous : his curio- 
sity is not idle. Nothing comes amiss to him, and he learns 
to do nearly all kinds of work : he attends the Hospitals, 
and Anatomical Lectures and Dissections : he learns to bleed 
most skilfully, and was fond of trying his skill upon his 
friends (for he was an odd and perhaps an unsatisfactory 
acquaintance, this Peter) : and when he got home he always 
carried a case of surgical as well as of mathematical instru- 
ments about him in those huge pockets of his, and in the 
wars many a fellow-soldier has Peter bled, many a comrade's 
wound has Peter bound up and mollified with ointment. As 
long as he is in Holland he is in the dockyard : and as long 
as he is in the dockyard he is at work. But he does so 
much more work than ship-building during his life, that we 
must not stay longer with him at the Saardam Docks : but 
go over with him to our own country, whither he came just 
about this time of year, 150 years ago. Nor will we stay 
long with him here : indeed not longer than to notice that he 
lives in Deptford dockyard — busies himself perpetually with 



124 PETEE OF KUSSIA. 

boat-building — rows and sails on the Thames almost every 
day, fair weather or foul : avoids all crowds ; at one time is 
entertaining the King in his own hired house, and at another 
entertaining himself in a Public House ; delights to see every 
thing, hates to be seen himself. A hard, wild, earnestly in- 
quisitive and active life he leads for some months, and then 
carries away with him nearly 500 artists and artisans. He 
goes to Vienna, and is about to go to Italy, when a Revolt 
of the Strelitzes brings him home suddenly to Moscow. He 
quells the Insurrection with sad severity. As soon as quiet 
is restored he begins reforming again with fresh vigour: 
reforming now not only the laws but even the habits of his 
people. He abolishes beards, taxing heavily those that wear 
them: he introduces women into general society: he does 
away with many of the absurd practices of their forefathers : 
he founds all kinds of schools : he has numerous books 
translated, and distributed, and sold cheaply. He encourages, 
and even compels, trade with other countries : institutes an 
Order of nobility [that of St Andrew) — makes the Calendar 
like that of other Christian nations — so that the year 1700 
should begin on the 1st of January instead of 1st of September. 
At the same time he goes on ship-building vigorously : makes 
all his nobles' sons enter the army and navy as privates, and 
attempts to join by canals the Don and the Volga. He was 
the life of his dockyard at Varonitz : he was master-man 
there indeed, but worked as a slave. Indeed he seldom 
seemed so happy as when he was at some hard handiwork : 
labour was his pleasure : the doing things that other men 
would not or could not do was his excitement. 

In 1699 dies Le Fort — the good and the wise — and Peter 
gives him the grandest of burials, himself walking in the 
procession as mere Lieutenant of his regiment. 

In 1700 Peter comes before the world as a soldier : an 
actor in European politics. "When he came to the throne, 



PETER OF RUSSIA. 125 

Muscovy was Russia : and however important in itself, it 
took no influential position amid the nations of Europe. It 
had no Representative at any European Court. Peter weigh- 
ing well its resources, sees that it may become a nation, even 
an empire : but only, to be sure, with some unscrupulousness 
of proceeding on the part of its Prince. Now Peter was 
naturally a particularly unscrupulous man : he was not the 
man, then, to see many lions in his way when he wanted to 
go anywhither: and an opportunity — an opening rather — 
offering itself to enter into an Offensive League against 
Sweden, he does so readily. There is war, and he goes into 
the hottest of it : and gets thoroughly beaten at Narva, and 
has some 6000 of his army killed, besides unnumbered 
prisoners. An ordinary man would have been somewhat 
discouraged by this : but Peter not at all : he was as full of 
life and vigour as ever, declaring it at the time to be on the 
whole best for him that he should be beaten : that thus his 
soldiery would have a more regular discipline and education 
in warfare. Indeed he seems to me now and always in war, 
to have displayed a more foreseeing, wise, legislative mind, 
than we ordinarily meet with in mere soldiers. He goes on 
with his peaceful plans as quietly and as energetically as 
before : makes sailors now as well as ships : he introduces 
all kinds of agricultural improvements : erects manui'actories, 
builds hospitals. His generals begin to beat the Swedes : 
and at the fall of Marienberg they take prisoner a widowed 
bride of fifteen, named Martha, afterwards known to history 
as Catherine, Empress of the Russias. In the autumn of 
1702 Peter fights most bravely and most successfully — as 
captain in his own guards — under one of his marshals. He 
abolishes the Patriarchate and reforms the Priesthood. He 
assumes the temporal headship of the Church. 

Now Peter plans Petersburg — founds it — builds it. He 
is architect and master-builder and clerk of the works. He 



126 PETER OF RUSSIA. 

has a wooden shed made for him in the midst of the work 
where he sleeps at night : he wants no house for the day- 
time, for from morning to evening he is out among his men. 
They build a fortress in six months, and a town of 30,000 
dwellings in a year : and yet at first they had not a tool, 
nor even a wheelbarrow : no, nor stone : no, nor earth even, 
on the spot — this they carried in bags, or in the skirts of 
their clothes, from a distance — these same men you will 
remember who took Azoph : strange men these (are they 
not ?) taking and building a city in the same rude way — 
with their hands. 

Peter returns to Moscow, and visits his nobles at their 
own houses as a private gentleman, and explains his views 
of empire conversationally, and endeavours in a manly simple 
way to engage their co-operation. He also entertains the 
great body of the citizens with all manner of amusements 
and -shows : and takes occasion amid their festivities to 
ridicule their old customs till he makes them feel their 
absurdity. Indeed in Peter there was infinite Humour, and 
this, where there is not Imagination, is almost a necessary 
element in the composition of a practical Great Man. 

Peter, however, is called away to war. He fights a grand 
battle with Charles the Twelfth of Sweden at Pultowa, and 
beats him thoroughly. This battle is one of the most 
famous in modern history : but I have no time to tell you 
anything about it but its result, and to add, that if Peter 
had never done anything but this, he might have been 
deemed a great General, which is some considerable way to- 
wards being a great Man. But war at best is but an art : 
and most commonly but a crime: and so I shall not attempt 
now to estimate the degree in which the character of Peter 
is hereby affected. And so also of the battle of the Pruth 
which shortly followed, which was as disastrous to Peter as 
that of Pultowa was glorious. This was in 1711. 



PETER OF RUSSIA, 127 

The two or three following years were taken up with 
sieges and battles in very various places, and the Tsar 
gained a most important naval victory over the Swedes in 
1713. This last was to him a matter of peculiar pleasure 
and pride — of much more than its essential importance would 
have produced — from the circumstance that the navy with 
which he fought owed its existence and its excellence en- 
tirely to his own personal genius and exertions. He had 
himself made the navy which he commanded, and with it 
destroyed one which was irresistible before his own existed. 

But in the intervals of peace which occurred during these 
years, Peter has been going on with the building of Peters- 
burg (to which he removes the Senate in 1712) and im- 
proving every part of his dominions. His reforms and new 
institutions are innumerable. And he so manages it that 
soon he has nothing more to fear from the Swede, and may 
sit down quietly and devote himself to what he most cared 
for, the internal improvement of his Empire. His great 
passion is now, as ever it was, Shipbuilding. He now gets 
some vessels of 1000 tons built, and soon possesses 40 ships 
of the line, carrying more than 2000 guns, manned with 
15,000 men, besides a proportionate number of galleys and 
other small craft. 

He now determines to revisit Western Europe. He goes 
to Copenhagen, where he is elected Admiral of the English, 
Dutch, and Russian fleets there : which position he always 
declared was the proudest of his life — he having done the 
most to earn it. He revisits Saardam among other places, 
and is just the same hearty, unassuming, simple man he 
was nineteen years before — renewing with great zest his 
acquaintance with all the smiths and ship-carpenters he 
knew when their fellow-workman there. He thence goes to 
Paris : thence to Berlin : sees everything, learns everything: 
buys many things — pictures, books, cabinets; hires many 



128 PETER OF RUSSIA. 

men — engineers, painters, smiths : and sends all to Peters- 
burg. On his way to Berlin he goes to see Luther's tomb 
and apartments at Wittemberg, and pays the memory of 
the Reformer such homage as one great man will always pay 
to another. He returns to Petersburg at the close of the 
year 1717. 

And now on his return is enacted by Peter a tragedy, 
which displays to us at least his strength of mind and heart 
— whether it displays anything better or worse will be vari- 
ously decided — I mean the death of his son, Alexis. I 
cannot lay before you the details of the case : but it was of 
this kind. This son of his was as bad a man as well could 
be : he was in fact a combination of almost all vices : he 
disobeyed and opposed his father in every possible way : he 
hated his improvements and was determined to undo as 
much as he could of them when he should come to the 
throne, and to bring back all things to their ancient condi- 
tion. He gave himself up to every species of licentiousness, 
and was a most unnatural son, a most cruel husband. Peter 
remonstrated with him very often and very seriously : and 
before he set out on his late tour he threatened to disinherit 
him if he did not reform : and gave him six months to make 
up his mind whether he would give up his evil practices or 
continue in them: and assured him that if he did not speedily 
amend he would send him to a convent. Seven months 
passed away and he heard nothing from his son. He wrote 
to him from Copenhagen, requiring his decision. Alexis 
instead of answering his father's letter fled to Vienna, and 
threw himself into the protection of his father's great rival 
the Emperor of Germany — Charles — who not receiving him, 
he went to Naples. Peter wrote to him to return, promising 
to give him another trial if he would : he did so. But Peter 
on his return, when he finds out the extent of his son's 
wickedness, of which he was not before aware, has him 



PETER OF RUSSIA. 129 

brought to public trial before the nobles and ecclesiastical 
dignitaries of the realm. You must understand that the law 
of Russia allows a father absolute power over the life of a 
son, and therefore in the eye of the laws of his country he 
would have been blameless if, on the discovery of his son's 
conspiracy against him (which is on all hands confessed, 
even by Alexis himself) he had put him to death. But 
Peter does not do what he might have done thus blamelessly, 
but something much better. He gives up the trial of his son 
into the hands of the most competent of all possible tribunals: 
and the following expressions in the Address which he made 
on the occasion to the assembled nobles may perhaps help 
to make us enter somewhat into his own views of this 
matter : 

Though by all divine and human laws, and especially by 
those of Russia, which exclude all interposition by the civil 
power between father and son, even among private persons, 
we have a sufficient and absolute power of sentencing our 
son according to his crimes and our will, without consulting 
any one : yet men not being so clear-sighted in their own 
affairs as I:i those of others, and the most skilful physicians, 
instead of prescribing for themselves, having recourse to 
others when sick : so, fearing lest I should bring some sin 
on ray conscience, I state my case to you and require of 
you a remedy. For if ignorant of the nature of my distemper 
I should go about to cure it of my own ability, the conse- 
quence might be eternal death, seeing that I have sworn on 
the judgments of God, and have in writing promised my son 
his pardon provided he tells me the truth, and afterwards 
confirms his promise with his mouth. Though my son has 
broken his promise, yet that I may not in anything depart 
from my obligations, I desire you will deliberate on this affair 
and examine it with the greatest attention, to see what he 
has deserved. Do not flatter me : and do not be in the ler.st 



130 PETER OF RUSSIA. 

afraid that, should he deserve only a slight punishment, and 
you deliver your opinion accordingly, it will offend me : for 
I swear to you by the great God, and by His Judgments, that 
you have absolutely nothing at all to apprehend. Nor let 
it give you any uneasiness that you have to try your sove- 
reign's son : but without any respect of persons do Justice, 
and destroy not both your souls and mine. Lastly, let not 
our Consciences have anything to reproach us with on the 
terrible Day of Judgment, and let not our Country be hurt. 

On the lowest estimate of this Address it may be said that 
its writer could not be altogether what is meant by a Tyrant. 
The question in truth lay between the natural and decent 
indulgence of paternal feelings towards a son confessedly 
criminal, and the permanent welfare of his subjects — be- 
tween the temporary happiness of a son, and the lasting hap- 
piness of a kingdom — between the happiness of One, and the 
happiness of Eighteen Millions : a question not easy to de- 
cide. 

On the 5th of July, 1717, the ministers, the senators, and 
the generals, to the number of 160, to decide it, however, by 
unanimously condemning Alexis to death. The Tsar caused 
the whole trial to be printed and translated and circulated 
among his people, and presented to the sovereigns of foreign 
nations. The Tsar does not seem to have intended to have 
carried the sentence into effect. Alexis dies convulsively the 
day after — whether by visitation of God or otherwise there 
is no evidence to prove. 

Seven years more Peter lives and reigns — seven of the 
most peaceable years of his life. In 1721 he was at peace 
with Sweden (his greatest enemy, Charles the Twelfth, had 
died two years before), and at a congress at Neustadt, in 
Finland, all his conquests are for ever ceded to the Tsar : 
thus leaving him sovereign over Livonia, Esthonia, Ingria, 
Carelia, and other extensive territories, and securing to him 



PETER OF RUSSIA. 131 

the dominion of the Gulf of Finland, which had been the 
object of his toils and perils for twenty years. By this peace 
Peter has now attained to the summit of his glory : he has no 
kingly wish ungratified : he has done what he essayed to do : 
he has made an empire — and that too the largest one on 
earth. Peter appoints a period of public thanksgiving to 
Almighty God for all his success : and the Senate, with 
much co-operation with the heads of the Church, take that 
opportunity of entreating him, as a token of gratitude on the 
part of his subjects, to allow them henceforth to entitle him 
and address him as Peter the Great, Emperor of all the 
Russias, and Father of his Country. All this is done with 
indescribable joyousness and profuse festivities of all kinds — 
with fitting dignity on the part of Peter, and immeasurable 
enthusiasm on the part of his people. And having lived as 
such three years longer, he died on the 28th of January, 
1725, aged 53 years. 

Now before summing up his character, let us look for a 
moment at the net result of his actions. 

When Peter came to the throne Muscovy was Russia, and 
Moscow was Muscovy. It was a barbarian province, with- 
out any one element of civilization : or at least with its little 
civilization centred in its capital. It had no representative 
at any foreign court : no commerce, no manufactures : and 
exercised no appreciable influence in Europe. When Peter 
died he bequeathed to his wife the consolidated empire of a 
territory the largest ever known in the world. It was much 
the same then as now, comprising very much more than a 
million of square leagues — say from East to West, six 
thousand miles, and from North to South, much more than 
two. It borders upon the Frozen Sea, the Mediterranean, 
and China : comprehending more territory than all the other 
nations of Europe put together, and far, far exceeding any 
kingdom Roman, Persian, or Macedonian ever ruled. And 



132 PETEE OE EUSSIA. 

assuredly, therefore, when we remember that this magnifi- 
cent inheritance was acquired mainly by Peter's own labour of 
head and hand, it may well impress us with some prepo? 
sion of his greatness. 

And the whole aspect and outline of the man is one of 
Driginality. An absolute monarch, at the age of twenty-five 
leaving his kingdom merely to learn how to govern it : a 
: t determining to educate himself; putting aside power 
and pleasure for a while that he might gain knowledge — and 
doing all this against the wills and despite of the dangerous 
opposition of his subjects — I call this great, I call this wise. 
It is an act of self-denial and of far-seeing preference of the 
future to the present which is the chief characteristic, if not 
the chief constituent, of greatness. And throughout his 
whole life a curious and profitable spectacle is this man ; full 
of apparent contradictions and yet really throughout con- 
sistent. A thorough reformer of the state, an imperfect re- 
former of himself, and such with penitence : a promoter of 
education, yet a man of no learning : half savage and yet the 
civiliser of his people : impatient yet indefatigable ; capricious 
ye: self-denying; boundless in magnificent projects yet most 
sparing in all personal expenses : an inland prince yet giving 
all his best energies to the creation of a navy : both planning 
and executing his own projects, even calling into existence 
the means as well as the objects of his wishes : equally ca- 
pable of commanding an army or a navy, and as well able to 
make a ship as to be a sailor, to do soldier's work as general's : 
knowing how to forge iron as well as to rule men : in all 
handicraft and statecraft equally experienced : so singularly 
original a man is Peter. In fact he did what no one had 
ever done before him : he changed the manners, the laws, 
and the very residence, of an innumerable people : though a 
despot, he was more patriotic than any citizen king : though 



PETER OF RUSSIA. 133 

an absolute monarch, he was a more thorough reformer than 
the most revolutionary of all republicans. 

And as a great King nothing perhaps can well display the 
peculiar greatness of Peter better than comparing him with 
his great opponent, Charles the Twelfth of Sweden. Charles 
was the hero and the self-seeker : Peter the practical man 
and the self-denying : Charles had genius and vanity, Peter 
neither, only singleness of purpose and earnestness of will : 
and so Charles sowed tares and Peter seed-corn : and what 
Charles did flourished, died, and is forgotten : what Peter did, 
lives and grows and promises to endure. 

In Peter, as you will have observed, there was not the 
least development of the speculative intellect : indeed he did 
not in any way concern himself with any abstraction ; he 
had no new tiling to preach of Truth or of Duty ; no old 
enigma to interpret. Life was to him no Theorem but only 
and emphatically a Problem : men and things were his sole 
studies — his instruments and ends. In fact he was quite the 
type — on a gigantic scale — of a practical man, a Man of 
Action. And there is, I am apt to think, something of the 
greatest in this kind of character. For one sees every day 
that it is a comparatively easy thing for an indisputably small 
man, under favouring circumstances, to keep uttering showy 
things, building strange systems, making original guesses — 
quite to tyrannise over some, and to make multitudes call 
him Master : all this, I say, we see — whether in the case of 
singer or speaker, of orator or mental philosopher — is con- 
sistent with any degree of personal inferiority — with the man 
himself, in his entire character, being morally and socially 
no better,' no greater, than many of those who like Peter 
never have harboured a Theory, never have been visited by 
an Idea, yet have managed to influence permanently for good 
myriads of their fellow-men. Great then, I repeat, was Peters 



134 PETER OF RUSSIA. 

characteristic peculiarity — his earnestness of effort, his intense 
working energy, his life-long laboriousness. Perhaps no 
man that has ever lived has done so much work as he, and 
so various : and what he did he did so as to make it last 
until now : which lasting of any thing, as I have often told 
you, is a great presumption of its goodness. 

Peter was not a vain man : he did great things noiselessly, 
all things earnestly : no parade, no attraction of the eyes of 
others on himself. Of all things he hated to be stared at, to 
be pointed out with the finger. When he was in Holland 
he never would stir out of his lodgings if there was a crowd 
about them, and went always undistinguished among the 
workmen to his work in the dockyard : and when in Eng- 
land, there were strange stories of his shyness, he living al- 
ways obscurely, and with only those for his companions who 
could teach him something.. 

Nor was he a mean man : everything he did was on a 
large and liberal scale. No ruler seems ever to have united 
economy with what was becoming in his own establishment 
better than did Peter. He wasted nothing, but distributed 
innumerable things gratuitously. 

His main faults were those of temper : the great fault, but 
not the greatest, of passionateness. There was scarcely 
perhaps a more hasty-tempered man in his dominions than 
himself. But sullenness or deliberate revengefulness, these 
were not his, but rather a certain noble, royal generosity. 
And after all his excesses he was penitent exceedingly. 
True undoubtedly it is, that on the first aspect of the man 
there is such want of self-command, and such exceeding 
coarseness of manner, that one rather shrinks from him: 
such roughness, such wilfulness, such uncouth vehemence. 
But we shall never perhaps quite understand a great man at 
first sight: we must be patient with him. And when we 
have become so with Peter, we see at least that there is 



PETER OF RUSSIA. 135 

considerable virtue in him : that his deliberate acts interpret 
him to us more truly than his occasional impulses : and that, 
above all, most considerable allowances must be made for 
him which must not be made for ourselves, his physical 
construction was so strange, and his education so wretched, 
and his temptations so strong. From his birth he was 
subject to fearful fits : to the seductions of his boyhood any 
other would have been as nearly a victim as Peter was a 
victor: and unlimited command over others is no help to a 
man for acquiring any command over himself. The fact is, 
Peter was a barbarian all throughout ; and therefore perhaps 
not to be judged wholly by a Christian standard, any more 
than we judge of the ancients so, or indeed some of the 
Hebrew Great Men. Indeed the Gospel of Christ in its 
transforming character, in its characteristic features, was 
never adequately presented to Peter. In its best form or in 
the fulness of its influence it seldom reaches a Court : but in 
Peter's case, it came in the sad disguise of a most corrupt 
priesthood. But this we may say for Peter, that he was in 
some respects more religious than his contemporaries, and 
never that I know of did he treat any form of true religion 
otherwise than with respect. He always attended Divine 
Worship on Sunday in whatever country he was : in Eng- 
land and at Archangel he used frequently to go to the 
worship of the Society of Friends: in Holland to the Pro- 
testant Presbyterian : and his interference with the Greek 
Church in his own country was simply to reform its admi- 
nistration — in no way to destroy its influence for good, but 
to increase it. The specimen we have seen of his principles 
in his Address to the Senate before his son's trial would 
impress us favourably rather than otherwise, I think, as to 
his principles : and his deliberate public acts never contra- 
dicted them. After every victory he returned public thanks 
to Almighty God : in building Petersburg, next to a Citadel 



136 PETER OF RUSSIA. 

he built a Cathedral : and throughout his private journals 
there is frequently visible strong Faith in God, and a hearty 
love of the right and hatred of all falsehood whether of word 
or deed. 

But you may say, he was so cruel and so capricious, that 
he cannot be called a good man, and therefore too only 
doubtfully a great one. But now let me say that I do not 
know that he was severe, except in the case of the punish- 
ment of treason: and that in such case — especially in his 
case — severity is not altogether misplaced. The men whom 
he caused to be put to death had determined if they could 
to put him to death : they had rebelled against him without 
just cause, from mere hatred to his improvements, and with 
the hope of establishing themselves on his ruin : and I do 
not see that such men require much indulgence, or need 
much sympathy. A conspirator knows beforehand that by 
the laws of all countries — especially of despotic ones — he is 
playing for large stakes — Victory or Death : and playing 
with his eyes open he has no right to complain if he loses. 
Peter may have been in such cases unnecessarily severe 
(but neither you nor I know this), and if so then all that 
was needless was certainly criminal. But still I will say 
that Peter was not deliberately cruel : he was most pas- 
sionate at times, but also oftenest very kind. They loved 
him in Holland : and so they did in his army. Many and 
many a kind act has Peter done to the widow and the 
orphan : he never refused to go to the font as godfather to 
the children of any of his soldiers, and a kiss and a ducat 
he gave them every one. The immediate cause of Peter's 
death was his over-kindness in dashing into the water (when 
very ill) to save a boat's crew from drowning. These things 
do not admit of his being a bad man above his fellows. 
But even if occasionally cruel and capricious, I do not know 
that for one having only Peter's spiritual privileges there is 



PETER OF RUSSIA. 137 

anything fatal to bis general superiority of character in the 
charge. For as I have already suggested, we deem many of 
the men most notable in Hebrew History men of whom the 
world was not worthy, and yet there was not surely entire 
freedom from cruelty or caprice in the characters of Gideon 
and of Joshua, of Samson and of Jephthah : of David also : 
wherefore I suppose that there must be some other rule to 
judge of those who have not had full Christian privileges 
from that by which we judge those who have. And if I 
can but impress upon you in these Lectures, to exercise 
towards others a gentleness of judgment proportionate to 
that severity towards yourselves which I so inculcate in my 
sermons, I shall not have altogether failed in my object. At 
least I do feel this, brethren, that it is not for us — for any of 
us here who do so little while we enjoy so much — to pass 
severe judgment against any man, be he who he may, who 
all his life through when he might have lived in luxury has 
denied himself for the good of others, however mixed up his 
exertions may have been with imperfections and errors, 
which may have been the result in a good measure of his 
not having been blessed with privilege as we : lest even 
such an one as this poor blind barbaric Peter should rise 
up against us in judgment in that day when we shall all be 
judged according to what we have had and what we have 
improved. 

And now I shall conclude by making a remark or two 
about Great Men in continuation of those which I made to 
you on laying before you the story of Luther. By a Great 
Man then — or at least by one of that class of Great Men 
which alone I shall bring before you here — I must remind 
you that I mean one who has deliberately influenced for 
good the destinies of some large portion of mankind — who 
has been the Champion of some human Cause — the Herald 
of some human Truth. To have so acted as to be univer- 



138 PETER OF KUSSIA. 

sally recognised as haying exercised an appreciable influence 
on the fortunes of mankind ; to have passed into history as 
the symbol of wisdom, of glory, or of worth ; to haye left a 
name which is henceforth as a household word in the speech 
of all ciyilised men ; in fact, to haye been such an one and 
to haye done such things as Posterity will not willingly let 
die — this is to haye been a Great Man. Nay, any man who 
can manage to liye in the hearts of a single people so that 
his children's children shall rise up and call him blessed — 
such a man is a Great Man. For be sure that it is not pos- 
sible that that which is little or that which is false should 
live so long and so glorious a life as this. It seems to be an 
universal law that nothing which is not born from above 
can live for long. To endure for a generation, an ordinary 
man may, by the force of circumstauces, do this : but to 
endure from generation to generation, for this a man must 
have some force in himself — something perchance of the 
Divine in him. In the long run, too, give them time 
enough, the True and the Right will prevail — the False and 
the Wrong will fail. No Truth can die, no Lie can live, for 
ever. And therefore if any man or anything grow century 
after century, while there is such growth there must be life, 
and all life has its origin from God. It is as great a pre- 
sumption that anything is of God which men cannot destroy 
when they fight against it, as it is that if it comes to nought 
when they do, it is not of God. In the great field of Time 
that which is false is as tares, which though spreading it 
may be for awhile and overrunning everywhere, but bringing 
forth no fruit by which man's spiritual life may be nourished, 
men will be at no pains to sow afresh age after age : that 
which is true is as the corn, which though it be hard to rear 
and there be less of it, yet men will hazard all to preserve, 
because they find that there is food in it for themselves and 
their children. By their fruits, then, you may know Great 
Men. 



PETER OF RUSSIA. 139 

But a man of this kind — a Great Man — is a rare gift of 
God. God sends only one or two in a century ; nay often 
not one in two or three centuries. Many men indeed there 
are in almost every country and every century — remarkable, 
distinguished, notable — men whom their own generation do 
wonder at and call great: men who, if they be Men of 
Action, do contrive by a ceaseless restlessness and unhealthy 
activity of the lower faculties to keep themselves promi- 
nently before the eyes of their contemporaries : or who, if they 
be Men of Thought, are able, though being the clear reflexes 
of the average mind and feeling of their own age and no- 
thing more, to expound accurately to almost every man in it 
many of his own thoughts and aspirations, embodying more 
clearly than he could do for himself his belief, and imaging 
his own ideal more vividly without much magnifying it. Of 
such men there are many always everywhere. Our own 
age possesses them perhaps sufficiently for its needs. But 
those of whom I would speak to you are not exactly such. 
These are rather men to whom God has apparently assigned 
a more special mission in this world, and whom He has gifted 
with peculiar powers to perform it, and who have willingly 
used those powers for the end for which apparently they 
were given ; men they are who either have given birth to 
some new Spiritual Reality henceforth to take a permanent 
place among the data of Universal Science, or who have 
struggled manfully in doing a work higher than all others 
thought was possible for them : men who either mentally or 
morally have put out to the uttermost the strength which 
God has put within them, and gradually grown themselves 
the stronger through its exercise — who have both fulfilled a 
mission for their brethren, and in the act of so fulfilling it 
have singularly educated and disciplined their own souls. 
And indeed, perhaps the consideration of the Four Great 
Men whom I have already brought before you — the seeing 



140 PETER OF RUSSIA. 

how different they are and yet all how great — may be suffi- 
cient to suggest to us, and perhaps to impress upon us, that 
God causes the state of the world to be maintained and ad- 
vanced — consolidated and rendered permanently progressive 
— by distributing the work among many men ; not enduing 
all men with the same kind of talents, but most men with 
only certain practical, self-nourishing, self-guiding faculties 
— some with superior and governing power — the fewest with 
a light and strength, an intellect and energy, which can 
illuminate the most knowing and make the seers see more 
clearly — which can control the most powerful and legislate 
for myriads. Thus while it is acknowledged that the main 
mission of every man on earth is to work out his own salva- 
tion — to educate and to discipline his own soul — and that 
this work may be, and is to be, wrought out by his struggle 
to perform to the uttermost his duties towards his neighbour, 
it must also, I think, be seen and admitted that the mission 
of one man in this world is often as different from that of 
another as the office of the hand is from that of the foot, and 
that therefore there must be a different measure to mete our 
judgment in the one case from what there is in the other. 
And though I most frequently preach to you how Mind is 
the ordained Lord of Things — how Man is the commissioned 
conqueror of Circumstance — yet in passing judgment on the 
characters of others I would not have you forget that this is 
true only within certain limits : that it is only in fact a half- 
truth (though the more forgotten half) and that it must be 
equally true that it was no fault in Columbus that he was 
not as Luther — that it was absolutely impossible that Peter 
of Russia should have been as Francis Xavier. 

One other remark and I have done. I wish you particu- 
larly to bear in mind that I am no Idolater of Intellect. 
Intellect I regard but as an instrument : the use of it alone 
determines a man's greatness in my mind. The mind (or 



PETER OF RUSSIA. 141 

what we call so) is but a small part of a man : and if a man 
have only a large Mind he is after all but a misshapen crea- 
ture, whom one would naturally recoil from rather than admire. 
In any living creature Symmetry, not Size, is the essential 
element of beauty ; and he who has exercised so fully as to 
have developed every part of his spiritual nature, he only is 
a model man. It is not therefore necessary in my opinion to 
be a Genius in order to be a Great Man: nor is every 
genius necessarily one of those great men whom I should wish 
to bring before you. Those men who are as illustrious for 
the weakness of their Conscience as for the strength of their 
Intellect, I pass by : not indeed as denying them a place in 
men's memories, but only regarding them as men the con- 
templation of whom I cannot make pleasing enough for such 
meetings as the present. Of the Four Great Men whom I 
have already brought before you, no one of them is most 
remarkable for his intellect. For it is not the actual attain- 
ments of the man so much as his aim and tendency that I 
look at and judge him by : not the achievement I regard so 
much as I do the struggle. The first questions I have asked 
myself of such as are called Great Men are of this kind : 
Did the man mean to be good and to do good ? Did he seek 
the Right and the True, and follow them despite all difficul- 
ties? Did he hate the Wrong and the False, and fight 
against them with all his strength ? Did he deny himself 
for his brethren's sake ? Was he generous, brave, sincere ? 
Hearty, truthful, spiritual? Were his sins deliberate and 
premeditated, and was he afterwards impenitent ? Or were 
his sins the result of impulse and his virtues of self-discipline ? 
and his penitence as prominent as his sin? — These are the 
kind of questions I ask myself concerning a man that is said 
to be Great : and if I find that in the main (however imper- 
fectly consistent he may have been), that in the main, I say, 
such was the man's aim and attainment, then the more ele- 



142 PETER OF RUSSIA. 

vated indeed his Intellect the more worthy he is of admira- 
tion ; but if he is not thus, then he may have been a famous 
man, a remarkable, a distinguished man — a genius, a wonder 
— but he is not what I can consent to call a Great Man. Be 
he what else he may, he is a dwarf in Soul. Yes, dear 
Christian friends, I can most truly assure you that I reve- 
rence far more the humblest day-labourer in our parish who 
does not know his letters and yet fears God and does his 
Duty, than I do the most splendid incarnation of genius if 
he be a self-seeker or a hypocrite — a wicked man or a vain 
one. Nay, perchance I might sum up all I have to say to 
you in these Lectures, by begging you to take this as the 
Motto and the Moral of them all, That under every form and 
in whatever guise, self-seeking is meanness, self-sacrifice 

ALONE IS GREATNESS. 



JOHN WYCLIFFE. 



I am going to speak to you this evening of one of the 
greatest of onr Countrymen — a man in many ways most 
interesting and deserving of our earnest study, John 
Wycliffe: but before doing so I would just recall your 
attention to the characteristics of Great Men in general, by 
making a few unconnected remarks in continuance of those 
which I made to you on this Monday last year, before 
speaking to you about Luther. The men I am going to 
speak to you of this winter are of the same class with those 
of whom I spoke to you last: namely, men of Action, rather 
than of Thought : men who have done and suffered more 
than their brethren for their brethren's sake. Bear in mind 
then these two things that I then said to you : That in my 
opinion, in order to be a Great Man a man must be the 
Minister of a great Cause : and then, that the characteristic 
of a Great Man is emphatically Self-sacrifice. I would now 
add : To be such an one as I would uphold to you as the 
Greatest, a man must have a deep feeling of the Infinite in 
his own soul: he must recognise a mystery and a divinity 
and an every way unfathomable grandeur in man's Life and 
Destiny : he must be full of the faith that in the seeming 



144 JOHN WYCLIFFE. 

littleness of the Present there are latent the germs of an 
immeasurable Future. He must be a man to whom the 
inspiration of the Almighty has given an understanding 
above other men : a view into the essence of things visible, 
and into the existence of things invisible: a wisdom not 
merely of the Intellect but of the Heart : not only a keener 
perception of the True and the Right, but an intenser love of 
them. Insight, Foresight, these are the Great Man's ; but 
so also always are Sincerity, Sympathy ; a love of the Real, 
a hatred of the False : a fear of nothing but of being wrong, 
a coveting of nothing so much as of doing well. To see the 
right when others cannot, and to choose it when others will 
not : to resist temptations which others yield to, and to bear 
burdens cheerfully which others shrink from bearing at all : 
to have such confidence in himself and in his cause as may 
enable him to live on the approbation of his own conscience, 
and to be careless of the mere praise of others : yea, to 
cherish and to accomplish a purpose of blessing for his 
brethren amid their persecution and their scorn — these are 
the characteristics of a Great man. And he who shall pro- 
phesy to men of the Divine for a lifetime in sackcloth : he 
who shall plead before them for Humanity and the Rights of 
Conscience ready at any moment to seal his testimony with 
his blood — such a man is, I think, among the Greatest. 

And a proud thought it may be for us, Brethren — may it 
be equally an ennobling one — that among the greatest of 
such, Englishmen stand conspicuous. No greater men are 
to be found in the catalogue of this world's heroes than may 
be found recorded in our own country's history. One such I 
believe we have before us this evening : though I fear that 
the records we have of him may scarcely enable me to 
present him to you as such. I fear I cannot make you feel 
how great a man he was in the short time I have to speak 
to you : more especially as his greatness is not of a startling 



JOHN WYCLIFFE. 145 

nor of an imposing kind ; but of a most unassuming though 
self-substantiating one : a greatness which impresses itself 
upon you only after a careful consideration of the times in 
which he lived, and a comparison of him with those who 
went before him. Indeed I might say more generally, that 
it is really a very small portion of any such man that we can 
at any time take in. We can but see points here and there 
of his course : while all the intervals we pass over must have 
been filled up with busy and complex growth of motives and 
of thoughts. The man has been forming and strengthening 
and enlarging himself all the while he has been invisible to 
us : training himself in private in those very virtues the 
public exercise of which is so wonderful : sacrificing in silence 
many of his heart's fondest hopes to Duty, and in stern 
though secret conflicts of Reason with Passion striving to 
make Principle uniformly victorious. Character you know is 
a growth as well as a gift : an acquisition through discipline 
as well as a consequence of natural disposition: and the 
exercises of the training are frequently as remarkable as the 
achievements of the course. But at the same time, in pro- 
portion as what may be said to you about any man's charac- 
ter shall make intelligible to you all the facts of his history 
— in proportion as it connects all the known points of it into 
a coherent and clearly marked figure — it will be its own 
evidence to you of its worth. If I present you with the true 
idea of the man, you will be able to see him by the light of 
it : you will feel that he was that, or like that, and none 
other. For the right presentation of a fact or a truth will 
for the most part render it luminous to him who is of a single 
eye. The true idea of any thing or event is to the facts of 
its history or its science as an answer is to a riddle — it 
at once satisfies its conditions and interprets its obscurity. 

But if these, remarks are applicable to most men, they are 
so peculiarly to Wyclifle : for he comes before us in the great 

K 



146 JOHN WYCLIFFE. 

scenes of history as a figure in outline only ; scarcely a por- 
trait : no man of flesh and blood ; a statuary man : a man of 
the Baptist type : a Voice crying in the wilderness, and little 
more. We have no story of his childhood : no memorial of 
his school-boy days, nor of his young manhood : nay, no 
anecdote of him at any time, no saying of his festive hours, 
no legacy of his dying ones. No, there the man stands be- 
fore us, a specimen of true manhood indeed, but if without 
its weaknesses yet also without its sympathies : loving God's 
Truth better than man or woman : a spiritual labourer and 
warrior withal from his youth : waking or sleeping with 
tools in his hands, and girt about with the whole armour of 
God : fighting with one hand and working with the other : 
dying of the palsy mail-clad. 

Before giving you, however, the brief outline we have of 
the story of Wycliffe, I must say a few words to you about 
the state of the Church of Christ in this country before and 
during his time. 

By whom the Christian Church was introduced into Eng- 
land we do not know. The earliest records of our history 
reveal our country to us as full of all idolatry and cruel 
heathenism : of that Druidism of which we have so remark- 
able a memorial in our own Parish. Then came the Romans : 
and during their time of rule the darkest portions of this 
heathenism seem to have been in a good measure supplanted 
by something more humane ; and traces of Christianity are 
visible soon after their arrival, and very numerous before 
they leave it. We have accounts of a council of bishops at 
St Albans in the beginning of the fifth century : ay, and 
this St Alban, he was a Roman officer who was a Christian 
martyr : and Pelagius, who has so much fame in all Christen- 
dom, was a Welshman, named Morgan. The Romans changed 
even the very natural aspect of the country. When they 
first came, almost all of it was covered with woods. There 






JOHN WYCLIFFE. 147 

were very few towns : huts only here and there : wholly 
different from what it is now. And so long as they con- 
tinued here civilization and christianization were progressive. 
But when they left the country old Druidism began to return : 
the Saxon invasion, however, prevented its restoration by 
establishing in its stead a new heathenism from the north. 
For more than a century now Christianity almost disappears 
from the Heptarchy. It is restored by Gregory the Great's 
sending a mission of forty monks from Rome. A fine scene 
we have it represented — that opening of the year Six Hun- 
dred. Savage, rude, barbaric people : living in hovels of 
plastered wicker-work ; hunting, drinking, fighting always ; 
caring nothing but for plunder and for pleasure: hating each 
other and ignorant of God. They gather round the foreigners 
— they wonder, they listen, they applaud* The monks 
preach, the monks pray : they build Churches, they establish 
Schools : they go about doing good : they threaten and they 
promise out of the Invisible : they embody a higher and a 
happier mode of life: and how great is their success you 
may judge from the rapid growth of such Universities as 
Iona and Lindisfarn, and from the appearance of such a 
native writer as the Venerable Bede, in a country which half 
a century before did not possess an Alphabet. Then the 
Danes come and undo all, or at least most : and barbarise 
England once more. But England is delivered. How? 
By one man. By whom 1 Alfred. Here doubtless we have 
a Great Man. We have few trustworthy records of him, 
otherwise he would perhaps be the fittest of all Englishmen 
to be a model to Englishmen : so brave, so wise : courageous, 
collected : a just man and merciful and devout. A third 
portion of his time was given up to the toils of study and the 
exercises of piety : he was the good genius of Literature and 
of Art : the Founder of our Navy, the Restorer of the Church : 
the pervading soul of public justice and constitutional law : 



148 JOHN WYCLIFFE. 

he commanded personally in more than fifty battles in the 
open field against the invaders of his country : and all this 
under the daily pressure of bodily disease which made life to 
him a perpetual burden. If we must pass such an one by, 
let us do it with a pause. 

When Alfred died, the Church was partially restored. 
There were seven Dioceses (co-extensive with the kingdoms 
of the Heptarchy) : several Cathedrals : more Convents. 
But there were no Parishes. The clergy lived with their 
bishops and were supported by the voluntary contributions 
of the people. These alms were all placed in the bishop's 
hands, and he distributed them for the most part thus : to 
support the clergy, to relieve the poor, to repair the church, 
to entertain strangers. During these times the clergy only 
went out as missionaries, into the neighbourhood of the 
cathedrals and convents chiefly, preaching wherever they 
could find hearers, and with no restrictions but the will of 
their bishops. Then the landowners build them oratories 
and chapels to preach in statedly : then in process of time 
— not suddenly but very gradually — lords of the manor agreed 
to maintain each a clergyman for the instruction of his own 
tenants if the bishops would let them come out of the con- 
vents and live among them always : the landed proprietors 
having, however, the choice of the particular clergyman who 
should thus be his chaplain in consideration of his furnish- 
ing him with a house and some land and a fixed payment 
in money. This arrangement was made very generally, and 
nearly uniformly, before the time of the Nonnan Conquest : 
and the portion of endowment was fixed at a tithe of the 
produce of the estate. Thus was it rapidly growing to be 
when the Danes came again and destroyed the monasteries, 
and overturned, or at least unsettled, all ecclesiastical ar- 
rangements. Then came the Normans, as you know, about 
the year One Thousand. Then after a while took place 



JOHN WYCLIFFE. 149 

those most memorable contests between the powers of the 
State and of the Church which the names only of Lanfranc, 
of Anselm, and of Becket are sufficient to remind us of. 
How this long struggle went on you know right well. 
Henry an abject penitent at the tomb of Becket, and John's 
kingdom paying an annual tribute of a thousand marks for 
the suspension of a papal interdict — these things tell too 
plainly. Rapidly, firmly, sternly did the Papacy advance. 
With success came also pride : with pride, worldliness, and 
wickedness and wretchedness of all kinds. In the beginning 
of the thirteenth century the lowest point is reached. A re- 
action begins. Grostete bishop of Lincoln, in 1255, stands 
forth the first Reformer : a fervid, rough, generous, pious 
man. He opposes the Pope, boldly and wisely, and is ex- 
communicated, but his people love him and will not leave 
him, and he dies in quiet possession of his see, declaring with 
his last breath that the Pope is Antichrist. Then come 
Bradwardine and Fitzralph — men of many virtues, but not 
of the greatest : men better suited to exemplify what was 
good than to extirpate what was evil : to improve the ad- 
ministration of a Diocese than to reform a Church or to 
regenerate a Nation. England had need of a man somewhat 
other than these : and being needed, he appeared. 

Wycliffe was born just a century and a half before 
Luther — and that is now more than five centuries ago — in 
the year 1324, at Wycliffe, near Richmond in Yorkshire. 
His childhood, as I have said, is to us a blank. We meet 
with him at Queen's College, Oxford, where he is more than 
commonly diligent and learns Greek, which was then almost 
an unknown tongue in England. At that time the chief 
studies of the place were civil and canon law and Aristotle. 
All kinds of fences in logic and scholastic tournaments were 
prevalent then, and in these Wycliffe was an eminent, and 
even incomparable victor. But these never satisfied him. 



150 JOHN WYCLIFFE. 

He felt that if the New Testament were a direct Revelation 
from God it must be of supreme worth both as a means and 
an end of study. To this then he devoted himself so fer- 
vently that he acquired the name of the Gospel Doctor. He 
goes on studying and teaching this new Divinity until his 
attention, and that of all about him, is forcibly withdrawn 
from all study by the appearance of the greatest Plague that 
ever was known in this country. This great visitation, how- 
ever, instead of producing a permanent reformation in all 
orders and conditions of men, seemed rather, after the first 
shock, only to let loose the worldliness of their hearts. 
Wyclifte was much struck with this, even deeply impressed 
with it. He is stirred in spirit and writes a book, called The 
Last Age of the Church, in which he denounces the sins 
of the priests more emphatically even than those of the 
people. 

But it is not until 1360, when he is six and thirty years 
old, that he begins the real warfare of his life. Now he 
attacks the Mendicant Orders : and brings upon himself a 
host of enemies with whom there was no peace while there 
was life. These Orders were instituted as counter-agents 
to the corruption of the secular clergy, as the Universities 
had been in the preceding century as reforms upon the de- 
generacy of the abbeys and the convents, which had become 
mere Castles of Indolence. The Friars were at first effi- 
cient : they were patronised by Grostete when they were 
first introduced, though censured by him afterwards. They 
rapidly became numerous and powerful, and then as rapidly 
grew tyrannical and rapacious. They were introduced into 
England only in the beginning of the thirteenth century, and 
before thirty years were passed there were one hundred con- 
vents of them in this country. Several of the highest digni- 
taries of our Church laid aside their rank and entered into 
one or other of their orders, and in the last thirty years of 



JOHN WYCLIFFE. 151 

the century, besides many cardinals and bishops, there were 
at least four Mendicants elected to the Papal Throne. They 
extort money by absolutions to the dying, and sell shares in 
masses to the living: somewhat as Tetzel afterwards in 
Luther's time. They called these last, Letters of Fraternity : 
they were outwardly illuminated writings on vellum covered 
with sarsnet and sealed with the seal of the order. Thus as 
Wycliffe said, 'they made property of ghostly goods where no 
property may be, and professed to have no property in worldly 
goods where alone property is lawful.' This was more than 
Wycliffe would bear in silence : his irritated honesty was 
prompting enough for him to speak — an inward call which 
he deemed he could not be wrong if he followed. He boldly 
ventured almost on the strength of it alone : for the only 
great truth which Wycliffe had at this time was perhaps 
this : that pieces of illuminated vellum covered with sarsnet 
and sealed with any seal on earth, could not save a man's 
soul alive. 

In 1365 Wycliffe is said (though doubtfully) to have been 
appointed Head of Canterbury Hall at Oxford : and hereby 
to have got into a lawsuit, which was carried before the 
Pope. During this time, however, he relaxes not in the least 
in his zeal against the corruptions of the clergy: but actu- 
ally engages most fervently in a new cause which from the 
first he saw involved the very foundations of the papal 
authority in England, and in which at least he should feel 
bound to give judgment against the Pope. The cause was 
this. Urban V, demands of Edward III. a thousand marks 
annually as a feudal acknowledgment for the sovereignty of 
England and Ireland, on the ground that Edward's prede- 
cessor John had surrendered them to Urban's predecessor 
Innocent III., and the oath of fealty and the tribute had 
both been rendered by John's immediate successor. Subse- 
quent princes, however, had evaded the oath, and the tribute 



152 JOHN WYCLIFFE. 

had not been paid for three and thirty years. Urban de- 
mands that the oath should be taken by Edward, and the 
tribute paid, with arrears : and threatens in default of com- 
pliance that the king should be cited to appear at the papal 
judgment-seat, there to be further sentenced. The king asks 
the advice of his Parliament. Parliament at once declares 
that John had no right, and could have no power, to give 
away his kingdom thus, without their concurrence; and 
that they would help Edward to the uttermost to resist the 
claim. Wycliffe is publicly called upon to defend the judg- 
ment of the Parliament. He does so with great power, and 
originality also, as I should say. For he asserts most 
emphatically and most efficiently maintains this proposition, 
namely, that the King and Parliament are supreme in all 
temporalities over ecclesiastics as well as laymen, all canons 
and Church laws notwithstanding : and rests it upon unpre- 
cedented ground, namely, the spirit and the letter of the Xew 
Testament. Such Publications as this could not fail under 
such circumstances to make him conspicuous. But when I 
speak of publications I must remind you that Printing was 
not yet invented : and therefore books being multiplied only 
by copying, Wycliffe's writings could not have been diffused 
nearly so extensively as they would have been now ; though 
the very scanty publication of opinion which there was in his 
day made important writings to be eagerly sought for and 
dispersed among those whom they were the most fitted to 
influence. In what he had now written he had not only 
treated the political question with unprecedented ability and 
vigour, but had also enunciated great Christian and eccle- 
siastical truths w T hich sunk deep into the minds of his coun- 
trymen. The spirit of the earnest practical Reformer of the 
Church pervades them all. He feels that the Idea of the 
Christian Church, gathered exclusively from the New Testa- 
ment, is not only not represented in the existing state of 



JOHN WYCLIFFE. 153 

Christendom, but is opposed by it. He sees that for the 
Clergy, for instance, to consider and to call themselves the 
Church, cannot be right : and that whether they be so or 
not — and the less so if they be — it cannot be right that any 
men with their vows and duties should give themselves up 
to worldly business chiefly, or act in worldly affairs in a 
worldly spirit : seeking treasure most of all on earth and using 
spiritual functions only to promote temporal ends. But was 
not this what they were doing? No high office of state — 
neither that of Prime Minister or Prime Judge, nor Trea- 
surer, nor Secretary of State — had ever yet been filled by a 
layman : nor was any of the most menial offices of the 
household free from ecclesiastics. He utters himself again 
more fully about this, and the general evil of the great 
temporalities of the Clergy. His opinions find an echo in 
Parliament: and they present a petition to the King that 
ecclesiastics may not any longer hold offices of state. 

Wycliffe now becomes a Professor of Divinity at Oxford. 
He duly performs the duties of his office : but these do not 
wholly occupy him. Wycliffe was not a man whose mind a 
mere College could absorb. His aim was the edification of 
a Church. He sees clearly, and feels deeply, that the Church 
has Professors of Divinity enough : and that what it needs 
more than these are Preachers to the People. An extensive 
exhibition of the great commandments of God's Law and a 
plain exposition of the great Truths of Christ's Gospel, this 
is the most pressing want he thinks the Church has now. 
So he sets about supplying both : and for this purpose he 
very speedily publishes two books; the one, an Exposition 
of the Decalogue in English, and the other a book called 
The Poor Caitiff, which was a small collection of Tracts, the 
purpose of which he says is ' to teach simple men and 
women the way to Heaven.' Now you may think these 
things no great things to do — not such as necessarily require 



154 JOHN WYCLIFFE. 

any general superiority of character in him who did them. 
Certainly if this were all Wycliffe did, or nearly all, I should 
not call upon you to account him Great, though even then I 
would rather be as he than as any other man of his age. 
But I may also say that the doing thus little (as we call it) 
was doing a good work which no one had done before 
Wycliffe in England, and one which was deemed so import- 
ant in his own day that it raised up against him a host of 
enemies who well-nigh brought him to the stake. And if 
you read these little books of his, you would see that they 
embody a mode of thought and feeling about the greatest 
subjects very far beyond and above his age. His Exposi- 
tion of the Decalogue indeed is a hearty pleading, as of an 
old prophet, for the rights of God over the soul of man — a 
Pauline preaching both to princes and people of righteous- 
ness and temperance and judgment to come. He is no 
barren annotator ; no mere interpreter of the letter : he 
represents every commandment as exceeding broad, discern- 
ing the thoughts and intents of the heart : and there is 
pervading and animating all his exhortations such an incul- 
cation of dependence on Divine aid and gratitude for Divine 
mercy, as gives to every word that peculiar unction which 
no words have but those which come from a heart which 
feels the thing of which it speaks. 

In 1374 the Parliament sends an embassy to the Pope; 
Wycliffe is named in it second in dignity. The conference 
is held at Bruges. After two years of diplomacy some little 
is conceded of papal claims. Though Wycliffe had not been 
to Avignon, where the Pope was residing, yet he had seen 
so much of the worldliness of the papal court during his em- 
bassy that he returns from it, as Luther afterwards on a like 
occasion, with a deep disgust at the whole system of Papal 
Temporalities : and his denunciations against the Clergy 
now extend even to the Pope. The Crown gave him some 



JOHN WYCLIFFE. 155 

preferments for his conduct in the negotiation — among them 
the Rectory of Lutterworth. To this Wycliffe retires : but 
not to slumber. His trumpet grows louder and louder, and 
at every blast has a more certain sound. He is at length 
summoned by Courtney, bishop of London, to answer for his 
opinions to the Convocation at St Paul's. This was in Feb- 
ruary, 1377. Wycliffe presents himself before the convoca- 
tion : and John of Gaunt and Lord Percy present themselves 
there too. There is fiery speech between the Bishop of Lon- 
don and Lord Percy : there are great crowds and great riots, 
and the convocation is broken up, and Wycliffe goes back to 
Lutterworth. 

On the 21st of June, 1377, Richard, the son of the Black 
Prince, is King. The relations of this kingdom to Rome are 
soon discussed again : and Parliament defers to Wycliffe 
whether it might detain the treasure of Peter's Pence, and 
other exactions, the Parliament having represented that the 
tax paid to the Court of Rome for ecclesiastical dignities 
amounted to five times more than that obtained by the king 
from the whole produce of the realm. And it appears that 
benefices of the value of six thousand pounds a-year were 
held by Frenchmen and Italians, (according to certain papal 
provisions) men who did not ever even visit the parishes 
over which they were paid to preside. "Wycliffe replies in 
the affirmative : but herein it is not so much the tenor as it 
is the grounds of his reply which shews the man. He rests 
his reply exclusively on a Scriptural view of the nature of a 
Christian Church, and of the spirit of the Law of Christ : he 
maintains that the Church of Christ ought to be essentially 
unlike a kingdom of this world : deriving its strength from 
the possession of an unworldly spirit and supporting its tem- 
poral existence only by the willing contributions of its mem- 
bers : and adds that as regards the spiritual penalties which 
may be denounced in case of opposition to the Pope, no bene- 



156 JOHN WYCLIFFE. 

diction or censure of a Priest, or even of the Pope himself, 
would produce good or evil, except in proportion as it was in 
agreement with the mind of Christ : and that in fact the bad 
had nothing to hope from priestly absolution, and the good 
nothing to fear from papal excommunication. In consequence 
of this addition to his previous impeachments of the prero- 
gatives of the Roman See, a Bull is issued by the Pope 
against Wycliffe, and letters are addressed to the King, the 
Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bishop of London, and the 
University of Oxford. The news of their arrival excites great 
discussion in Oxford, great disturbance in London. When 
Wycliffe appears to answer the summons of the Synod of 
Lambeth, the people break into the court and forcibly inter- 
rupt all proceedings : and a message at the same time comes 
from the Queen-mother which tends to the same result. 
Wycliffe is again free, and comments on his own case in a 
statement full of spiritual light and fire. 

Wycliffe I say is again free: but his object is not his own 
personal freedom, but the spiritual enfranchisement of his 
brethren. He therefore publishes two books : one a Treatise 
on the Schism of the Popes — the other on the Truth and 
Meaning of Scripture. The occasion and significance of the 
first was this : The Popes had now for nearly seventy years 
removed their residence from Rome to Avignon. Clement 
V., a Frenchman, was the first to do this in 1304, to please 
Philip the Fair, 10 whom he owed his elevation : and his 
six immediate successors were all Frenchmen. The people 
of Rome were irrepressibly indignant at this, and in 1378 — 
the year of Wycliffe's life in which we are now— they com- 
pelled the conclave to elect an Italian who should reside in 
Rome. This they did, and the Pope they elected called him- 
self Urban VI. But it was pleaded by some of the leading 
cardinals that the election was the result of intimidation and 
was therefore void: and they retired to Fondi and elected 



JOHN WYCLIFFE. 157 

Clement VII. This created not only a schism in the Church, 
but also among the leading political powers of Europe: 
France, Spain, Sicily, and Scotland, supporting Clement: 
Italy, and the rest of Europe, with England, supporting 
Urban. "Wycliffe does not advocate professedly the cause of 
either : he seems to consider one as bad as the other : he 
says that God had graciously cloven the head of Antichrist : 
he urges that England should take occasion by the existing 
divisions of Christendom to effect by its own efforts its own 
reformation. His other book on the Truth and Meaning of 
Scripture would alone entitle him to his honourable name of 
the Evangelical Doctor. It contains a plain earnest state- 
ment of the essential characteristic doctrines of the Gospel : 
and many words which must have made many ears to tingle 
in his days. He also contends for the supreme authority 
and entire sufficiency of the Scriptures, and for the necessity 
of their being translated into English and diffused anions the 
People. He moreover insists intrepidly and faithfully on 
the right of private judgment, and discusses freely every sup- 
posed exclusive prerogative of the Christian Clergy, and ex- 
pounds the true Idea of a Christian Church. 

And not only this: now he sets about translating the 
Bible : and accomplishes it by his own unaided mind and 
right hand. There were various versions of parts of the 
Bible before Wycliffe's time : but none generally in the hands 
of the people. It was worth living for to do what "Wycliflfe 
now did. Yes, to make the Holy Scriptures an inalienable 
inheritance of a whole people — to wrest from the hands of an 
exclusive caste that possession wherein lies virtue to make 
all men wise unto salvation — to roll away so that it might 
not be rolled back again the stone from off the well of the 
Water of Life — this is a deed for which Englishmen of the 
latest generations may well call Wycliffe Great. How fear- 
ful as well as novel a crime it seemed to his contemporaries 



1 58 JOHN WYCLIFFE. 

we may learn from such a passage as this from the history 
of one of his clerical contemporaries : ' This master John 
Wycliffe has translated the Bible out of Latin into English, 
and thus laid it more open to the laity, and to women who 
can read, than it had formerly been to the most learned of 
the Clergy, even to those of them who had the best under- 
standing. And in this way the Gospel pearl is cast abroad 
and trodden underfoot of swine, and that which was before 
precious to both Clergy and Laity, is rendered as it were the 
common jest of both. The jewel of the Church is turned into 
the sport of the people, and what was hitherto the principal 
gift of the Clergy and Divines is made for ever common 
to the Laity.' And a Roman Catholic historian, a con- 
temporary of our own, recognises the same importance 
in this act of Wycliffe's when he says : ' Wycliffe made 
a new translation of the Bible, multiplied the copies with 
the aid of transcribers, and by his Poor Priests recommended 
it to the perusal of his hearers. In their hands it became an 
engine of wonderful power. Men were nattered with the 
appeal to their private judgment : the new doctrines insen- 
sibly acquired partisans and protectors in the higher classes, 
who alone were acquainted with the use of letters : a spirit 
of inquiry was generated : and the seeds were sown of that 
Religious Revolution which in a little more than a century 
astonished and confounded the nations of Europe.' 

These Poor Priests whom this historian mentions were 
another of Wycliffe's means of evangelising England. They 
were a number of John Wesleys, who went about the coun- 
try under Wycliffe's directions preaching the Gospel. To us, 
in our settled times, it may seem strange, this perpetual 
Itineracy : but in Wycliffe's time it was much less so. And 
you should bear in mind these two things, namely, that these 
preachers were regularly ordained men, and that the same 
principle was implied in the institution of the mendicant 



JOHN WYCLIFFE. 1 59 

orders, the Friars of whom I have already spoken to you. 
This institution was the great practical peculiarity of Wycliffe, 
and in his defence of it, entitled, Why Poor Priests have no 
Benefices, there are considerations which it would be exceed- 
ingly well for all of us in these times to lay to heart. 

But these doings of Wycliffe — especially his translation of 
the Bible — met with great opposition. It was soon practi- 
cally proscribed by the Parliament and by the Church : but 
it went on circulating, and there were few parishes in Eng- 
land which had not either a copy of it, or at least the oppor- 
tunity of hearing it read to them by some of WycliffVs Poor 
Priests. 

In the beginning of 1381 Wycliffe publishes twelve Con- 
clusions on Transubstantiation at Oxford. In these he takes 
the ground that this doctrine was not that of the Anglo- 
Saxon Church, nor of the Catholic Church previous to the 
tenth century. They excite the greatest ferment in the 
University : Wycliffe and his followers are condemned under 
threat of the greater excommunication and imprisonment. 
Wycliffe appeals to the civil power. Courtney, who corner 
to the see of Canterbury in May, speedily summons a synod 
and condemns many opinions of Wycliffe's as heretical, and 
addresses letters to the Bishops and the University against 
them. The clergy unite in presenting a series of complaints 
to the king respecting the new doctrines. They obtain an 
irregular statute for the suppression of heresy and the arrest- 
ing of heretics, and formal proceedings are taken at Oxford 
against Wycliffe at the requisition of the Archbishop, who 
now terms himself 'Chief Inquisitor of Heretical Pravity.* 
Wycliffe addresses a Complaint to the King and Parliament 
which embodies the noblest principles and the most Christian 
faith. He is deserted for it by John of Lancaster. He 
appears before the Convocation at Oxford : makes his defence 
or confession — re-asserting, and in nowise recanting, his 



160 JOHN WYCLIFFE. 

objectionable opinions. His judges are perplexed : and 
therefore feeble. Wycliffe is banished from Oxford and 
retires to Lutterworth — with a heart as strong as his body is 
weak — formally and ecclesiastically in disgrace, but full of 
inward joy and essentially triumphant. 

He goes on writing and preaching against the abuses of 
Popery : and now more especially against Transubstantia- 
tion. He is summoned to appear before the Pope. He is 
seized with Palsy, and does not go. For two years he lies 
in this paralytic state. But ill as he was for these two years 
he published some of his most effective works : fourteen or 
fifteen at least. And really this is a fine spectacle, this of 
the Paralytic of Lutterworth. It is a fine sight to see a man 
worn down by a life of toil and anxiety — smitten with a 
malady which might seem to command a cessation of all 
harassing exertion, most of all of hot warfare — just escaped 
from destruction by his summons from the Pope — and con- 
stantly expecting that persecution would soon do its worst 
upon him — and yet learning no lesson of indolence or 
cowardice from these perils and troubles : on the contrary, his 
energies appearing to gather new strength and intensity, and 
his whole character of mind a fresh brightness as the 
shadows of death were thickening palpably about him. 
Never perhaps since the commencement of his warfare, was 
Wycliffe more formidable, never certainly more admirable, 
than during the season of his final banishment to Lutter- 
worth. Never was his voice more loudly, clearly, raised in 
the cause of Scriptural Truth, than at the approach of that 
hour which was to silence it for ever. Listen to some words 
from one of his last Sermons, and judge for yourselves : Men 
should not fear, except on account of sin, or the losing of 
virtues : since pain is just and according to the will of God : 
and the Truth is stronger than all its enemies. Why then 
should men fear or sorrow? The Prophet bid his servant 



JOHN WYCLIFFE. 161 

that he should not fear, because many more were with them 
than with the contrary part. Let a man stand in virtue and 
truth, and all this world cannot overcome him : for if they 
could overcome him, then they would overcome God and his 
Angels, and then should they make Him to be no God. 
Thus good men are comforted to put away fear : since, if 
they be never so few and feeble, they believe that they can- 
not be discomfited. Thus the words of Christ make his 
knights to be hardy. 

With these feelings he had long lived, and with them he 
was now about to die. All palsied as he had long been, he 
still continued at times to officiate in his parish, and it was 
while administering the sacred symbol of the body of our 
Lord that he was for ever disabled from serving God more 
on earth: and two days after, the 31st of December, 1384, 
he entered into his Eternal Rest — just a century before 
Luther was born. 

To say that he was buried and shall rise again might be 
enough in the case of most men : but of Wycliffe there is 
something more to be said, namely this, that at the Council 
of Constance in 1415 — thirty years after his death — his re- 
mains were ordered to be disinterred from out of consecrated 
burial-ground, and thrown far away from all Christian 
neighbourhood. And so they did with them — even so did 
Richard Fleming, Lord Bishop of Lincoln, who had been one 
of Wycliffe's Poor Priests, and was now an unsparing per- 
secutor of that faith which he had once laboured to promote. 
His remains were disinterred and burned and the ashes cast 
into the brook that runs by Lutterworth, called the Swift. 
1 The brook,' says Fuller, ' did convey his ashes to the Avon : 
Avon into Severn : Severn into the Narrow Seas : they into 
the Main Ocean ; and thus the ashes of Wycliffe were the 
emblem of his doctrine, which now is dispersed all the world 
over.' 

L 



162 JOHN WYCLIFFE. 

And now what have we here ? The fragments surely of 
the figure of a Great Man. That we have so few, we feel 
to be a pity : but that so many should have survived 
throughout Five Centuries, and that we wish them more — 
this alone is testimony to the worth of that to which they 
have belonged. But indeed it is not to mere historical re- 
mains — to written records — that Wyciiffe's greatness will be 
ever owing. No, we — ay "We, Christian Brethren — are 
some of Wyciiffe's monuments : for it has pleased God that 
we should be what we are in no inconsiderable degree through 
Wyciiffe's means. We are some of his spiritual children. 
TVycliffe it was who first caused the Light and Fire of God's 
Word to be so spread, if not kindled, in our country that no 
power of earth has since been able to put it out. This was 
a noble service : and as God thus honoured WyclifFe, so 
should we. Indeed, I verily believe that it is by keeping such 
men as these before our minds — pondering well on what they 
suffered and how they fought for the Gospel's sake — what a 
price they set upon it, even so as to part with all they had 
to buy it for themselves and to bestow it upon their brethren 
— it is by meditating at what cost of suffering and of toil, of 
thought and of sacrifice, that which is now the patrimony of 
every peasant's child has been procured and transmitted to 
us — it is only thus that we shall value as we ought our in- 
estimable inheritance of an English Bible, and learn to diffuse 
to our brethren and to hand down to our posterity the un- 
speakable gift which we ourselves enjoy. 

But let us note him more closely. Perhaps the first thing 
that strikes us is the exceeding self-oblivion of the man : his 
personal modesty. Though Wycliffe wrote perhaps a hun- 
dred books, there is no allusion to himself in any one of 
them. This is surely noteworthy. We can get no anecdote 
of him out of them : no trace of personal peculiarities : no 
stories of his daily life. He comes before us, as I said at 



JOHN WYCLIFFE. 163 

first, the mere figure of a man: full- formed indeed, but 
colourless : no brother man, but the dwelling-place of a spirit 
only. He was not a household man : you hear of no father 
or mother of his, no sister, no wife, no friend. However, he 
was not a rude, hard man : far from it : in all that he does 
he appears gentle, meek, calm. We do not find that he had 
any personal enemies — for he had no personal pretensions : 
he was an humble-minded and very earnest man : so intent 
about finding and teaching Truth that he never thought 
about any pretensions of his own. A very fine specimen of 
a Reformer he is for this very thing. A great many Refor- 
mers and Preachers of Truth deserve much of the opposition 
which they excite, because they often make themselves as 
prominent as the Truths they preach. There is often in 
them a pretension and a presumption which makes the bitter 
medicine of truth more bitter : and they often have too 
readily counted themselves martyrs to their Cause when 
they have been perhaps fully as much the victims of their 
own Vanity. But not so "Wycliffe : he was as gentle as a 
John, as courteous as a Paul. Whatever he suffered, he had 
the satisfaction of suffering for the very Truth's sake. But 
that he was not weak, or timid, or time-serving, I need not 
say. Energy and unremitting Labour were his characteris- 
tics. Indeed it is only intense earnestness and downright 
straightforwardness that will ever make an unworldly cause 
prevail. And that Wycliffe's cause has prevailed we know ; 
that it did prevail in his own time we have abundant evi- 
dence from his enemies. One of them tells us that 'you 
cannot travel any whither in England, but of every two men 
you meet on the road one of them would be a Lollard.' 
(Lollard was the name Wycliffe's followers had, from an old 
Bohemian word latter, to sing, to lull, as we have it.) And 
after a generation or two when the disciples of Wycliffe's 
Lollards became martyrs, we have the testimony of one of 



164 JOHN WYCLIFFE. 

Erasmus's cold bright jokes wherein he expresses the hope 
that either Lollardism or Persecution would stop before 
winter — as it raised the price of firewood so much. 

But it has been said that this success of Wycliffe's was a 
good deal owing to the Patronage of the Great which he 
enjoyed: of the Queen-mother (widow of the Black Prince) 
and that strange John of Gaunt, and the like. Now I would 
say to this and all like objections, that it is a very shallow 
way of accounting for the infusion of a new spirit into a 
people— a spirit which makes tens of thousands to renounce 
one religion and adopt another with so fervent a faith as to 
be willing to die at the stake for it — to say that it was done 
by the help of the mighty. Indeed in this case it is not 
true: for the Queen-mother had no power, and John of 
Gaunt deserted him as soon as ever he preached the pure 
Gospel : and more, many more, were they that were against 
him than they that were for him. And how is it that the 
Kings Wycliffe had to do with, and the great Lords, and the 
Popes, and all the Princes and Prelates, one does not think 
Great now, nor even see at this distance ; one does not talk 
of, one does not bless : but John Wycliflfe — the Poor Priest 
of Lutterworth — does stand out visible, and his name is in 
our mouths as a household word after the lapse of Five 
Hundred years. How is it, did I say? Why because an 
ordinary soul was in them and a great soul in Wycliffe : 
because they were only of the earth, earthly, while he had in 
him, as Daniel had, an excellent spirit, a heavenly spirit, 
even the Holy Spirit. And if Wycliffe was assisted by 
John of Gaunt, or any other, how did he — poor parson of 
Lutterworth — get the aid of these people? by flattering 
them, by fawning on them, by catering to their pleasures? 
No, by telling them the Truth. Well, Go thou and do like- 
wise. Rather herein, I say, is Wycliffe's especial greatness 
that he told the Truth to people efficiently; for only this 



JOHN WYCLIFFE. 165 

Telling of Truth to people thus, high or low, is something 
about the greatest thing that a man can do. What can one 
man do for another better than this — so to tell him the Truth 
of Christ as to win him from his wickedness and guide him 
to heaven? These are the men, we know, that shall shine as 
the stars for ever and ever hereafter : and these are the men 
of whom it may be said now, that all generations shall call 
them Blessed. No meed of glory can be greater than that 
which thousands and tens of thousands could have joined 
Lord Cobham in giving to Wycliffe — ' As for that virtuous 
man, Wycliffe, I shall say of my part, both before God and 
man, that before I knew that despised doctrine of his, I 
never abstained from sin. But since I learned therein to 
fear my Lord God, it hath otherwise, I trust, been with me. 
So much grace could I never find before in any instructions 
of the Church.' 

Thus Wycliffe left fruits, good fruits, fruits found after 
many days. He made an impression on his age and on 
ours : with no forces but those which were spiritual. Verily 
the secret of his strength lay in no patronage of a Queen- 
mother, or Duke of Lancaster: but in the Sword of his 
Mouth and that mysterious Urim and Thummim which he 
carried with him on his front — the living oracles of God. 

Some of the weapons with which Wycliffe worked his 
spiritual wonders were such as these : 

That the Pope of Rome has not, and ought not to have, 
of necessity, any temporal dominion : That in all temporal 
matters the clergy should be subject to the magistrate : That 
wealth was oftener a curse than a blessing to the clergy : 
That worldliness was inconsistent with the clerical character, 
and that in obvious, though not ostentatious, self-denial is 
their strength : That the voluntary offerings of the people 
should constitute the only revenue of the Christian priest- 
hood : and That it was a shame and a sin to employ either 



166 JOHN WYCLIFFE. 

the anathema of the Priest or the coercion of the magistrate 
to secure any temporal good to the clergy. 

That the Church of Christ consists not of Clergy only or 
chiefly, but of all Christians : That lordship and rule are for- 
bidden, ministration and service commanded, in the office of 
the Christian Clergy : That the power of the Pope, as well 
as that of the Clergy, is simply ministerial : That no Priest, 
not even the Pope, could absolve or excommunicate so as to 
loose or bind for eternity : That all hierarchical distinctions 
but those of Priest and Deacon are of human invention : and 
That the Laity have a right to remonstrate with the Clergy, 
and if needs be to rebuke them. 

He maintains that neither priestly absolution nor confes- 
sion are necessary to the salvation, though they may be 
conducive to the edification, of a man's soul : that the notion 
of indulgence to be granted out of the superfluous merits of 
the Saints is wicked : and that the virtual sale of livings is 
simony and sin. Also, That all priests should preach : and 
that an order of itinerant priests should be added to that of 
parochial priests, but that these should not subsist on the 
alms which they could beg from the people. 

His positive doctrines were those of Personal Responsibi- 
lity and Private Judgment : the Supremacy of the Scriptures 
in all matters of controversy, and their sufficiency when 
translated into the vulgar tongue to make every man that 
could read them wise unto salvation. A free remission of 
sins through faith in the merits of Christ's atonement, and 
the necessity of the sanctifying grace of the Holy Ghost — 
these pervade all his teaching. Everywhere he enlarges on 
the spiritual impotency of man : everywhere he magnifies the 
power of the grace of God. And his positive morality was, 
that Justice, and much more Mercy, is better than Sacrifice : 
that poverty of spirit is more to be coveted than splen- 
dour of wealth : that Charity begins with the love of man's 



JOHN WTCLIFFE. 167 

spirit, and that men who love not the Souls of their brethren 
can lore them at all but little : and that the work of Chris- 
tian Instruction is the best service a man may do for his 
brother. 

Of all Reformers Wycliffe is the least personally faulty 
whom I know of. There was no priestly duty which he 
neglected to perform, there was no personal grace which he 
neglected to cultivate, while he undertook to reform the 
Church. He never made any unchristian mistakes, or com- 
mitted any unchristian acts. That he was not invariably 
right in every thing need not be said : but it may be said 
that he was always right in the side he took in every great 
question : that whatever may be thought about particular 
opinions of his by Christians of our own time, those that are 
the most spiritual will find the least to be said against the 
soundness of his general principles. Of these he never re- 
tracted one : his views of Christian Truth did not so much 
change as expand : and in place of growing timid with age 
or equivocal with opposition, he repeats his doctrines ever 
with progressive power and expresses them with increasing 
clearness. 

And another characteristic excellence of the man was that 
he was not a mere doctor, a theologian, a controversialist : 
he was an open-hearted, large-minded man, harbouring 
within him many interests and susceptible of many sympa- 
thies : with a fine element of the true Englishman in him as 
well as of the Christian Churchman. He seemed ever to 
feel such a proud joy in defending and exalting his country's 
liberties as of itself would have entitled him to be termed a 
Patriot : and to have entertained such just thoughts of the 
capabilities of man's nature and such trust in its answering 
to any power that could develop it, as would alone have 
ranked him among the first of Philanthropists. 

"VYycliffe was personally a good man and (as one might 



168 JOHN WYCLIFFE. 

say) full of the Holy Ghost. His views of life and death, 
of man's duty and his destiny : of God — the Father, Son, 
and Holy Ghost — were after the most purely Scriptural 
teaching : and in all his aims and estimates, his feelings and 
judgments, there is uniformly obvious a singleness of eye 
and an unselfishness of heart which are at once the necessary 
and sufficient marks of a good and a great man. Never 
anywhere do we see any self-seeking in him : he was so ap- 
parently possessed by a faith in the Unseen and a love of 
the Future that he had no expectation and no desire to re- 
ceive any good thing of this world. He never used any 
power he possessed, temporal or spiritual, to gain anything 
for himself, not even victory over his enemies, or rather the 
enemies of his doctrine. He seems to have lived in this 
world under an abiding consciousness that he was sent into 
it to work out his own salvation by working for that of his 
brethren ; that the only good things in it were those which 
fitted man for the enjoyment of better things hereafter : and 
that if he would acquit himself to God and to his own con- 
science he must give himself up to a willing life-long service 
to Him who is both the Brother and the Saviour of us all. 

And there is a good deal of strong originality in Wycliffe. 
He argues everything out for himself, and that from first 
principles : generally speaking, he relies on no authority 
but that of Scripture, of Keason, and of Conscience. And 
surely this was something considerable to see and to do in 
an age when the Written Scripture was practically post- 
poned to a Traditional Philosophy, and when if the apostolical 
writings were not wholly disused in theological arguments, 
they were uniformly treated as if they could be only rightly 
interpreted by the help of Aristotelian or Scholastic Logic. 
And in his writings, there is scarcely any doctrine which 
the Church of England now prominently sets forth which 
was not clearly insisted upon by Wyclifte : there is scarcely 



JOHN WYCLIFFE. 169 

any error against which the Church of England practically 
protests which Wycliffe does not treat in a manner which 
anticipates and justifies our modern objections. 

And now a word or two to compare Wycliffe and Luther, 
and I have done. In one respect the likeness between their 
missions and their works is peculiarly striking. It was the 
glory of each to give the Holy Scriptures to his countrymen 
in their native language. In vehemence of temperament, in 
hardihood of deed, in exceeding daring ; in large, bold, free 
thoughts of things; in Titanic strength, and all that consti- 
tutes the Hero of history, Luther may indeed be said to stand 
above Wycliffe. And in truth it would be difficult to fix on 
any who must not be placed below that type of Ecclesiastical 
Reformers of whom I was speaking to you this Monday 
last year : It is impossible to think of Luther at Worms, or 
burning the Bull there outside the gate of Wittemberg, 
and think also at the same time of any man his equal in 
these respects. But the very grandeur of these scenes — the 
very pomp of that position — may have imparted to Luther 
something of that spirit which he needed. And we must not 
forget that he entered into the labours of Wycliffe, and reaped 
some of the seed which he had sown. For a long while be- 
fore Luther there had been pleadings against the abuses 
of the Papacy, and cries for vengeance for the murder of John 
Huss : and perhaps there needed but a voice so strong that 
clamour could not drown it, to make the claims of Righteous- 
ness to be listened to and obeyed. But till the days of Wy- 
cliffe — who was the spiritual father of Huss — the whisper 
even of what Rome called Heresy had not been heard in 
England. Resistance to the Pope of Rome indeed there had 
been before Wycliffe's preaching, but that resistance had been 
by Monarchs and by Parliaments, by mailed barons and 
weapons of a carnal warfare, rather than by any of those 



170 JOHN WYCLIFFE. 

which are divinely ordained for the pulling down of strong- 
holds. Among some few before Wycliffe, as I noticed to you 
this evening, there was assuredly the deep sense of wrong 
and an earnest longing for better and purer times : but these 
did not deepen into act : there was no giving vent to the as- 
pirations of the heart in stern death-struggle with the power 
that oppressed them. No man of them stood up in his gene- 
ration and declared himself the champion of the Unseen 
Truth and the enemy unto death of all the adversaries of 
men's souls. This was a deed Wycliffe was the first of 
Englishmen to do : and herein is his greatness, in his being 
the First. Remember, it was a century and a half before 
Luther : and no man but he had had the courage to speak, 
though similar corruption had been existing for ages. 
Luther, too, attacked a slumbering, lethargic, bloated enemy. 
In the early days of Luther, the Papacy was a creature 
which had, as it were, fed itself asleep : it had taken its fill 
of the good things of this world and was resting to ruminate. 
Thus Luther grew strong before his enemy was aroused. 
The outcry for Reformation had been occasionally before loud 
and vehement : but the clamour had been so often raised in 
vain that it was listened to at length with indolent, insolent 
composure : and thus the lethargy of the Vatican was dis- 
turbed only when the voice that could wake it was strong 
enough also to rebuke it. Not so in the case of Wycliffe. 
The Papacy then was in the fulness of its strength, and its 
activities had been kept keen and vigilant in England, from 
its having been denied its usual supply of food. Those 
thousand marks a year which John had paid as tribute had 
not been paid for thirty years, and when arrears were de- 
manded were refused. And Wycliffe was the man who 
counselled the refusal. This gave a keenness to the opposi- 
tion to Wycliffe, which was wanting in the case of Luther. 
And therefore a voice like his — demanding reformation, not 



JOHN WYCLIFFE. 171 

apologising for opposition — a voice denouncing the tempor- 
alities of the clergy as the destruction of the Church, and 
calling upon the Holy Father himself to cast away his crown 
of pride and his wealth, and do the work of an evangelist — 
and all this too in a tongue understood not only by the 
Scribe and the Recorder and the Priest, but also by the 
People sitting on the wall — a voice like this, I say, from the 
chiefest and most fruitful Paradise of the Papacy — that land 
on which Heresy never yet had taken root and Liberty al- 
ways flourished — a voice like this must have sounded on its 
first blast like a trumpet-note of Apostasy, and at once 
awakened in the papal autocrat the combined energies 
of Fear and of Hate. And yet in spite of all — foreseeing all 
— Wycliffe counted the cost, and counted wisely : he delibe- 
rately sold himself to do well : he weighed the Infinite Ethe- 
real Unseen against the Definite Material JPresent, and found 
it weightier : so he walked by Faith and not by Sight : and 
staking all on an appeal to Heaven's Invisible Help against 
Earth's Visible Force, Heaven heard the appeal, and hearing 
honoured it. 

And now we must bid farewell to Wycliffe. A good 
man and true was he : no self-seeker : a preacher of Pure 
Truth as well as an assailant of corruption — the morning 
star of that Reformation of which Luther was the noonday 
luminary. Allowing then to Luther the first place in that 
portion of the temple of Christian Fame which is sacred 
to Preachers of Truth and Reformers of the Church, I know 
not who can be chosen to fill the next, if Wycliffe be not 
worthy. 



SIR THOMAS MOEE. 



I am to speak to you this evening of Sir Thomas More : and 
of the many Great Englishmen there are, I select him to 
lecture upon, not because his story is the most interesting 
and exciting, or even the most remarkable or remembcrable, 
but because he is a specimen of a kind of man which it may 
be very useful for us to contemplate, and of which kind I 
know no better specimen anywhere. And of the Five Great 
Men I have already lectured upon, I have spoken of two 
Religious Reformers (Luther and WyclirTe) and of a Chris- 
tian Missionary (Xavier), and therefore perhaps I should be 
giving too great a proportion of attention to one class of men 
if I did not introduce to you men less professionally religious 
than these. I say professionally, or professedly, religious, for 
Sir Thomas More was essentially a religious — a Christian 
man. His religion pervaded his whole life — it coloured it 
all. From his first to his latest recorded act we find him 
loving mercy and doing justice and walking humbly with his 
God; full of thought always on grave and Christian sub- 
jects ; ruling his household according to Christian rule ; and 
ultimately dying in defence of what he believed to be a 
Christian's duty. And it is chiefly for the very purpose of 



SIR THOMAS MORE. 173 

shewing you how religion diffuses an equable grandeur over 
human life, that I select Sir Thomas More. For there is 
nothing remarkable in his history — save his death. It is 
the story of a man who simply did his duty in those stations 
of life into which it pleased God to call him : of a man who 
never sought an office and never shrunk from one : who did 
all that was given him to do thoroughly and wisely, and who 
when he could not live as he thought right, chose cheerfully 
to die. Now I think it may be very profitable for us to 
meditate upon this kind of man : for I fear if I bring before 
you only the men who have done dazzling things, your eyes 
will grow in time less able to discern the true greatness 
which there may be in every-day life, and one very great 
object of these lectures will be defeated instead of promoted. 
Few of us can do great deeds : but all of us may do the 
duties nearest to us, and in so doing may be acquiring 
strength to do greater. In Sir Thomas More we have, as I 
think, a very fine specimen of a Christian Gentleman, such 
as England may well be proud of— may take as a type of 
those that are her truest glory. An upright, brave, wise, 
calm, accomplished, affectionate man, was Sir Thomas More : 
with no display of any kind about him, no vanity : a man in 
all things to be counted upon : of generous, truthful nature : 
courteous but sincere, firm of purpose but gentle in manner : 
loyal and religious : a statesman,' a scholar : enlightened, 
unselfish : in every way a man in whom there was no guile. 
Such an one (as I have said) is worth studying, even if there 
be nothing startling, nothing dazzling about him. He is 
what we ourselves should be and may be : a man of house- 
hold worth, of every-day humanities. Let us look across 
the dense crowd of historical personages which fill up the 
picture of England for three centuries, and see what we can 
discover of him in those days of the Seventh and Eighth 
Henries which form so considerable and conspicuous a por- 
tion of the annals of our country. 



174 SIR THOMAS MORE. 

Sir Thomas More was born in Milk-street, in London, 
three years before Luther (1480). His father was Sir 
John More, one of the Judges of the King's Bench. Sir 
John sends his son to S. Anthony's School close by in 
Threadneedle-street, where the boy makes good progress 
in Latin, but in little else. At 15 his father takes him 
away, and makes him page in the household of Cardinal 
Morton, who was then Archbishop of Canterbury and Prime 
Minister. In those days it was the custom that gentle- 
men's sons should pass part of their boyhood in the house- 
hold of their superiors, where they might profit by listening 
to the conversation of men of experience and gradually ac- 
quire the habit of obedience and the manners of the world. 
He greatly pleased the Cardinal, who is said to have pro- 
phesied great things of him : and here he also became ac- 
quainted with some distinguished persons. He went to 
Oxford in 1497 ; he studied at Canterbury College — of which 
WyclifFe you remember is said to have been Head, and 
where Wolsey afterwards built the magnificent Christ Church. 
Here he distinguishes himself, and forms a friendship with 
Erasmus (though Erasmus was 30 and he only 17) which 
lasted throughout his life: and becomes first acquainted 
with Wolsey, then burser of Magdalen. More was full of 
zeal for study, especially for Greek, which was then so un- 
common a study that old 'Sir John More — who was a keen 
practical man, chiefly anxious that his son should become as 
great a lawyer as himself — discountenanced his studies and 
curtailed his allowance, and had him up to London under 
his own eye to keep him to the law. More studies at New 
Inn — then at Lincoln's Inn — steadily : and is appointed to 
read Law Lectures at Furnival's Inn — which he does for 
three years. But More is not quite the man that the study 
of mere Law could satisfy : he had a yearning after Truth ; 
he was anxious to cultivate all that he felt to be Divine in 



SIK THOMAS MOKE. 175 

him : he did not care so much about his worldly interests as 
his spiritual : he would be conversant with the arrangements 
of nature and the commandments of God as much as with 
the precedents and the formulas of man. So he gives him- 
self up to the study of Divinity and Philosophy as well as of 
Law: and in time (1504) delivers Lectures on S. Augustin 
to many of the eminent men of his day (his old tutor at Ox- 
ford among the rest) at S. Laurence's Church, Jewry. His 
religious tendencies increase: he prefers Theology to Law, 
and contemplates serving the Church as one of its ministers. 
He retires for awhile to the Carthusian convent of the 
Charterhouse, where he practises all kinds of austerities and 
pursues all kinds of studies : but at the end of four years he 
deems himself unfitted for the vows which he should be 
obliged to take, and he gives up the thought of entering into 
orders, and gets married. The next year he is elected a 
member of Parliament : and nearly his first act there is to 
oppose with great vigour a lavish grant of money to the 
king, who asked for it as a dower for his daughter Margaret, 
who was about to be married to James V- of Scotland. 
When it was reported to the king that it was principally 
owing to the eloquence of the younger More that it was re- 
fused, he immediately threatens him and imprisons his father 
— finding a frivolous charge against him, and making him 
pay a fine of a hundred marks before he would let him come 
out. More now practises law and indulges in literature. 
He invites and enables Erasmus to come over to visit him, 
and they spend together many days, the effect of which is 
ever henceforth visible in the lives of both, colouring and 
even moulding their whole mental characters. 

In 1510 More is appointed Under-sheriff of the city of 
London, an office of much greater importance then than now 
— a judicial one. This he has a great liking for, and dis- 
charges its duties as they had never been discharged before 



176 SIR THOMAS MORE. 

— quite ennobling his court by his manner of presiding over it. 
And indeed his whole legal practice is something quite noble: 
he will undertake no cause that he believes to be unjust : he 
will always plead for the widow and the orphan without fee: 
and is a peacemaker as much as he is an advocate. By 
such uncommon ways he rises to the first eminence at the 
bar: and is no loser by it even in a worldly sense, for he 
now gains an income greater than he ever had except when 
holding the highest offices of the realm. 

In 1515 his public — political — historical — life maybe said 
to begin, by his being sent by Wolsey on a commercial 
mission to Bruges. He discharges its duties satisfactorily, 
and the minister offers him, at the instance of the king, a 
pension for his services. This he declines, lest the obligation 
to the king which he would incur if he accepted it should be 
deemed to interfere with the impartiality of his judgments in 
those matters between the royal prerogative and the privi- 
leges of the city of London which came before him in his 
judicial capacity. The king is struck with the novelty of a 
lawyer having such a conscience, and wishes to make him a 
courtier. More will not be made to spoil his conscientious- 
ness in this way either, and most resolutely declines: as 
Erasmus truly says of him, ' no man ever striving harder to 
gain admittance to a court than More endeavours to keep 
out of it.' But the king urges it as a personal matter, and 
succeeds. He makes him first, Master of Requests : then, a 
Knight and Privy Councillor ; then, Treasurer of the Exche- 
quer. l And so from time to time,' writes his son-in-law 
Roper, ' was he by the king advanced, continuing in his 
singular favour and trusty service for twenty years. A good 
part thereof used the king, upon holidays, to send for him : 
and then sometimes in matters of astronomy, geometry, 
divinity, and of such other faculties, and sometimes in his 
worldly affairs, to converse with him. And other whiles in 



SIR THOMAS MORE. 177 

the night would he have him up to the leads, there to 
consider with him the diversities, courses, motions, and 
operations of the stars and planets. And because he was 
of a pleasant disposition, it pleased the King and Queen 
after the council had supped, at the time of their own supper 
to call for him to be merry with them.' This went on for a 
long time, but was more agreeable to Henry than to More. 
* And so when he perceived the King so much in his talk to 
delight, that he could not once in a month get leave to go 
home to his wife and children (whose company he most de- 
sired) he much misliking this restraint upon his liberty, began 
thereupon somewhat to dissemble his nature, and so by little 
and little from his former mirth to disuse himself, that he 
was of them from henceforth, at such seasons, no more so 
ordinarily sent for.' To his retirement at Chelsea, however, 
the King often followed him. ' He used of a particular love 
to come of a sudden to Chelsea, and leaning on his shoulder, 
to talk with him of secret counsel in his garden, yea, and to 
dine with him upon no inviting.' 

During this time his wife has died, and he has married 
again : and in 1515 he has written a history of Richard III. 
and another book, the fame, or rather the name, of which 
has been spread abroad far and wide from his time to ours — 
The Laws of Utopia — no place at all. This is the most 
notable of all More's writings : a book full of mild light : 
enunciating principles and advocating measures far beyond 
those current, in his time : and suggesting much that even 
this age has not had the power or the courage to accomplish. 
He has been engaged, too, ever since his first mission to 
Flanders — and for six years — in all kinds of honourable public 
service, and been doing all that it became his duty to do as 
well as it could be done. But now, in 1522, there is one 
thing that it was not in the obvious course of his duty to do 
which he does — and perhaps for that very reason does ill : 

M 



178 SIR THOMAS MORE. 

that is, he writes against Luther. Truly Luther's book 
against Henry was in as bad taste as could well be : but 
one looks for little more in Luther than for Truth and 
Courage : and they were there : but in More one looks for 
what was wanting in Luther, and one does not in this in- 
stance find it. He writes in a style as bad as Luther's, with 
arguments that are much worse. 

In 1523 he is elected Speaker of the House of Commons by 
favour of the Court. Now mark the independence of the 
man — as in the former instance of his refusing the pension. 
Wolsey demands of the house a large subsidy for the King, 
and in order more effectually to secure it, comes down to the 
house in person with great pomp and retinue. More deems 
it improper that Wolsey should come in this way, and so he 
instructs the house to receive him and his attendants courte- 
ously but in silence. They do so. Wolsey speaks earnestly : 
no one else speaks at all. Wolsey is surprised and annoyed 
at his remarkable reception ; he had rather have opposition 
than silence, and so he challenges this member and that : 
they only bow. He turns to the Speaker, and asks the rea- 
son of so obstinate a silence : and begs that he will speak. 
More replies respectfully, that the members are probably 
abashed by a presence and a pomp to which they were so 
wholly unaccustomed, and that as for his part he feels him- 
self unable on the instant to make such an answer as would 
be entirely satisfactory to his Grace. Wolsey retires defeated 
and offended, and the subsidy is for the present set aside. 
Now here was an instance of More's peculiar nature : When- 
ever he had not something satisfactory to say he never 
spoke ; and whenever his mind was not made up, his lips 
were always closed. I want you to mark this : for I hold 
up to you Sir Thomas More as a man of more disciplined 
mind and speech than any other whom I know of : a man 
who always in difficult positions says the best thing that can 
be said. 



SIR THOMAS MORE. 179 

More continues to advance to fresh honours in the state, 
and to be employed in new positions of importance. He is 
made Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster : he is consulted 
by the King on the subject of his Divorce : he accompanies 
Wolsey in his embassy to France : he goes on a third em- 
bassy himself to the Netherlands : and finally, on Wolsey's 
fall, in 1529, he is appointed his successor as Lord Chan- 
cellor: and thus becomes the Prime Minister of Henry 
VIII. 

Now we will not dwell upon his outward grandeur : for it 
was not this that made More a great man. Many men 
before and since have been Lord Chancellors and Prime 
Ministers, and somehow have not managed to be Sir Thomas 
Mores. Let us look then a little at the interior of the man, 
as far as we are permitted at this distance of time. Fortu- 
nately we have many records of him such as we want, in 
sayings of his which his friends have not been willing to let 
die. It is with these that I shall occupy you principally now, 
for as I have said there are few, if any, who are more worth 
listening to than Sir Thomas More. Take these instances : 

Just before he is made Lord Chancellor — while he is re- 
porting the result of his mission to the Netherlands to the 
King at Woodstock — a messenger comes to him to tell him 
that part of his house at Chelsea, and all his barns then 
full of corn, are burnt down. More writes thus to his 
wife: 

* Mistress Alyce, in my most hearty will, I recommend me 
to you. And whereas I am informed by my son Heron of 
the loss of our barns and our neighbours' also, with all the 
corn that was therein, albeit (saving God's pleasure) it is 
great pity of so much good corn lost, yet sith it hath liked Him 
to send us such a chance we are most bounden not only to 
be content, but also to be glad of His visitation. He sent 
us all that we have lost : and sith He hath by such a chance 



180 SIR THOMAS MORE. 

taken it away again, His pleasure be fulfilled. Let us never 
grudge thereat, but take it in good worth, and heartily 
thank Him, as well for adversity as for prosperity. And 
peradventure we have more cause to thank Him for our loss, 
than for our winning. For His wisdom better seeth what 
is good for us than we do ourselves. Therefore I pray you be 
of good cheer, and take all the household with you to Church, 
and there thank God both for that He hath given us, and 
for that He hath left us, which if it please Him He can in- 
crease when He will. And if it please Him to leave us yet 
less, at His pleasure be it. I pray you also to make some 
good search what my poor neighbours have lost, and bid 
them take no thought therefor, for if I should not leave my- 
self a spoon, there shall be no poor neighbour of mine bear 
no loss by any chance happened in my house.' 

His son-in-law Roper — who married his eldest daughter 
Margaret — has preserved many of his sayings : and Erasmus 
many : (you remember Erasmus — the enlightened forerunner 
but half-hearted fellow-labourer of Luther). Erasmus was 
but a cold superficial kind of man himself in matters of feel- 
ing, but he warms at the recollection of the days he had 
spent in More's house. He says, ' No man living was fonder 
of domestic pleasure than More : none fonder of children : 
he had a house full of them : there were his son and his 
son's wife : his three daughters, and their three husbands, 
and eleven grandchildren (with their servants and a host 
of his own) all living with him in a house which he had built 
at Chelsea. In his house you might imagine yourself in the 
Academy of Plato : or rather I should do injustice to his 
house by comparing it to the Academy of Plato, where num- 
bers and geometrical figures and mere moral virtues were the 
subjects of discussion : it would be more just to call it a 
School and Exercise of the Christian Religion. All its in- 
mates, male or female, applied their leisure to liberal studies 



SIR THOMAS MORE. 181 

and profitable reading, although piety was always their first 
care. No wrangling, no angry word was heard in it : no 
one was idle : every one did his duty with alacrity and with 
a certain temperate cheerfulness.' And his son-in-law says, 
' His custom daily was (besides his private prayers with his 
children) to say the VII. Psalms, the Litany, and the suf- 
frages following : so was his guise with his wife, children, and 
household, nightly before he went to bed, to go to his chapel 
and there on his knees ordinarily to say certain psalms 
and collects with them.' Now I say here is a pleasing and a 
profitable spectacle for us : and if we can learn no other 
lesson from the story of Sir Thomas More, we may learn one 
about Family Prayer : how greatly it adds to the happiness 
and the dignity of a household: how it solemnises and sweet- 
ens life, perpetually purifying it with heavenly influences, 
softening its asperities with the mild Christian chanties, and 
pouring a kind of consecrated wine and oil into the almost 
unavoidable wounds or bruises of domestic intercourse. 
When you think of how great a man More was for twenty 
years of his life — and how great he was through Gentleness — 
you may see more than appears at first sight in this house- 
hold worship of his. You may say these are little things : but 
More himself justly speaks of the hourly interchange of the 
small acts of kindness which flow from the charities of 
domestic life as no small things at all, but as having a claim 
on his time as strong as the occupations which seemed to 
others so much more serious and important. He says in a 
letter to Erasmus, ' After such occupations, the remainder of 
my time must be given to my family at home. I must talk 
with my wife and chat with my children, and I have 
somewhat to say to my servants : for all these things I 
reckon as a part of my business.' — On which a modern 
philosopher has observed, l Domestic solemnities and ameni- 
ties like those in the house of Sir Thomas More tend to 



182 SIR THOMAS MORE. 

hallow the natural authority of parents : to bestow a sort 
of dignity on humble occupations : to raise menial offices to 
the rank of virtues : to spread peace and cultivate kindness 
among those who had shared, and were soon again to share, 
the same modest rites, in gently breathing around them a 
spirit of meek equality, which rather humbled the pride of the 
great than disquieted the spirits of the lowly.' Roper says 
that all the time he lived with him, which was sixteen years, 
he never once saw a cloud upon More's brow, or heard a 
word of passion from his lips. He was indeed a man of 
inflexible integrity and severe virtue : no man dared to pro- 
pose to him anything that was only even ambiguously 
honourable, or to speak lightly of any duty in his presence: 
there was a kind of atmosphere of honour about him which 
repelled from him all whom it did not pervade : but at the 
same time he had no personal enemies, for he was so gentle 
in manner, so measured in speech, so kindly and so genial, 
though so wise and dignified. Though he lived so much in 
the world and at court, yet his heart was kept unworldly by 
the singular virtue of his private life. If he entertained his 
equals freely, he also frequently invited the poor to dine and 
to sup with him : the more he was in the king's palace, the 
more he resorted to the cottages of the poor : when he added 
to his house a library, he provided also a house near his 
own for the comfort of his aged neighbours : and when most 
involved in worldly business, he built himself a Chapel. He 
never entered upon any fresh public employment without an 
act of devotion and a participation of the Lord's Supper — 
trusting, as he said, more to the grace of God thus derived 
than to his own wit: and so long as his father lived he 
never sat upon his judgment-seat — that seat was the Lord 
Chancellor's — without asking his blessing upon his knees. 

Was More then puffed up by all his worldly honour and 
prosperity? or was he only a man whom an affectionate 



SIR THOMAS MORE. 18? 

nature and a guileless heart made weak, but not very 
wise? Did not his constant and uncommon mirthfulness 
indicate a lightness of heart incapable of deep impressions, 
and render him so pleased with the present as to be not 
very thoughtful or far-seeing as to the future ? Judge for 
yourselves from a small anecdote which Roper tells: 'One 
day when I saw the king walking with him for an hour, 
holding his arm about his neck, I rejoiced and said to Sir 
Thomas, how happy he was whom the king so familiarly 
entertained, as I had never seen any one before, except 
Cardinal Wolsey. I thank our Lord, son, said he, I find 
his Grace my very good lord indeed, and I believe he doth as 
singularly favour me as any other subject within this realm : 
howbeit, son Roper, I may tell thee I have no cause to be 
proud thereof: for I know that if my head would win him a 
castle in France, it should not fail to go.' Verily there was 
both Insight and Foresight here not of a common kind. 

But to return to his Public Life which now begins to grow 
troubled. 

Arthur, the eldest son of Henry VIL, married Catharine, 
daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella, sovereigns of Castile 
and Arragon (you remember these were they with whom 
Columbus had so much to do). Arthur died soon after his 
marriage, and Henry VII. got a dispensation from Pope 
Julius the Second for his son Henry VIII. to marry Catharine, 
his brother's widow : and she lived with him as his Queen 
for sixteen years. After this time Henry wanted to marry 
Anne Boleyn. So he raises the question whether the Pope 
could give a dispensation to him to marry his brother's 
wife: and he causes it to be discussed throughout Europe. 
Six years this case was discussed. The Pope finally declares 
the marriage valid and refuses a Divorce. But Cranmer 
(contrary to the Pope) pronounces the marriage of Henry 
with Catharine null and void, and the marriage which had 



184 SIR THOMAS MORE. 

taken place between Henry and Anne Boleyn valid : and 
this was followed by an avowed rejection of the Papal civil 
jurisdiction by the king and his subjects, though England 
yet adhered to the doctrines of the Church of Rome. 

Now it was this question that brought out the greatness 
of Sir Thomas More. 

More was with the Pope and against the King. 

The king uses every means of procuring an opinion favour- 
able to his wishes from his Chancellor, who excused himself 
as unmeet for such matters, as being by profession a lawyer 
and not a divine. But the king never ceased urging him 
till he promised to give his consent to have the case laid 
before him by some of the bishops and learned divines who 
were on the king's side. More' listened patiently, and on 
being asked his opinion by the king, answered thus : 

' To be plain with your grace, neither your Bishops, wise and 
virtuous though they be, nor myself, nor any other of your 
Council, by reason of your manifold benefits bestowed upon 
us, are meet councillors for your grace herein. If you mind 
to understand the truth, consult S. Jerome, S. Augustin, and 
other holy doctors of the Greek and Latin Churches, who will 
not be inclined to deceive you by respect of their worldly 
commodity, or by fear of your princely displeasure.' 

What could any man say better than this ? 

Shortly after, the king again pressed him to consider the 
matter. More fell on his knee and said, 'When your grace 
delivered to me the Great Seal, your grace said to me, First 
look upon God, and after God upon me : I desire to do so 
always : and nothing has ever pained me so much as that I 
am not able to serve your grace in this matter without a 
breach of that injunction by which your grace enabled me to 
serve you at all.' 

What could any man say better than this ? 

More henceforth retired from the Council whenever the 



SIR THOMAS MORE. 185 

Divorce was discussed ; and when the progress towards the 
marriage was so far advanced that he saw that the active 
co-operation of a Chancellor was necessary, More prayed 
the king to accept of his resignation of his office. The king 
accepted it with sorrow and with grace. 

Now at the time of his resignation More asserted that his 
whole income, independent of grants from the crown, did not 
amount to £50 a-year. This was not more than an eighth 
part of what he had previous to his acceptance of office 
eighteen years before; you may judge then of the man's 
integrity — as also by this, that when the Clergy voted him 
a testimonial grant a hundred times his income, he declined 
it. The circumstances were these ; 

On his retirement from the Lord Chancellorship, the 
Convocation agreed to present him with £5000. The 
Bishops of Bath, Durham, and Exeter waited upon him 
and tendered it to him, saying that they had been deputed 
by the whole Convocation to beg his acceptance of this 
offering as a small testimony of their sense of the obliga- 
tions they owed him, and which they hoped that he would 
accept according to the spirit in which it was presented. 
More replied, ' It is no small comfort to me that men so wise 
and learned accept so well of my simple doings. But I 
never purposed to receive any reward save at the hands of 
God alone : from Him, the giver of all good gifts, came the 
means that I have used to defend His cause, and to Him 
alone are the thanks to be ascribed. I give my most humble 
and hearty thanks to your Lordships, for your so bountiful 
and so friendly consideration ; but I must beg you to hold 
me excused from receiving anything at your hands.' And 
when they, after earnest reiteration, pressed it upon himself 
with no better success, they besought him that at least he 
would not deny their bestowing it upon his wife and children. 
He said, l Not so, my Lords : I had rather see it cast into 



186 SIR THOMAS MORE. 

the Thames than that either I or any of mine should have 
thereof the worth of a single penny. For although your offer, 
my Lords, be indeed very friendly and honourable, yet I set 
so much by my pleasure and so little by my profit that I 
would not, in good faith, for a much greater sum than yours, 
have lost the value of so many nights' sleep as was spent 
upon the same. And yet for all that, I could well wish that 
upon condition all heresies were suppressed, all my works 
were burned and my labour utterly lost.' 

And this was not said on the impulse of the moment 
merely, any more than when he tendered his resignation to 
the king. He was not thoughtless or careless about the 
change there would be to him. In a letter to his daughter 
Margaret he says, ' I forget not in this matter the counsel 
of Christ in the Gospel, that ere 1 should begin to build a 
castle for the safeguard of mine own soul, I should sit down 
and reckon what the charge should be. I counted, Mar- 
garet, full surely many a restless night what peril might 
befall me. And in devising thereupon, daughter, I had a 
full heavy heart. But yet, I thank our Lord, that for all 
that, I never thought to change, though the very uttermost 
should happen to me that my fears ran upon.' 

He was a man of thoroughly philosophic spirit : and quite 
wise enough to know that to reduce one's wants is as much 
a way of being rich as to increase one's money. He deter- 
mined on at once retrenching his expenditure: and as I 
consider this part of his history as very noble I will dwell 
upon it for a moment. He first takes care to provide for all 
his attendants and servants, whose services he was deter- 
mined to dispense with. He then calls together his children 
and grandchildren (you recollect my telling you how many 
of them there were in his house), and expresses to them his 
sorrow that he could not, as he was wont and as he gladly 
would, bear the whole charges of them all himself. He 



SIR THOMAS MORE. 187 

then asked them to give him their counsel : but when he 
saw them all silent he said, ' I was brought up at Oxford, at 
an Inn of Chancery, then at Lincoln's Inn, and also then in 
the King's Court, from the lowest degree to the highest, and 
yet I have at present left me little above £100 a-year (in- 
cluding all), so that now if we like to live together we must 
be content to be contributaries together. But we must not 
fall to the lowest fare first. "VVe will begin with Lincoln's 
Inn diet, where many right worshipful and of good years do 
live well : which if we find not ourselves the first year able 
to maintain, then will we the next year go one step (lower) 
to New Inn fare: if that year exceed our ability, we will 
the next year descend to the fare they have at Oxford, where 
many grave, learned, and ancient fathers are continually 
conversant. If our ability stretch not to maintain this 
either, then may we yet with bags and wallets go a begging 
together and hoping for charity at every man's door, sing 
salve regina : and so still keep company and be merry 
together.' 

On the 1st of June, 1534, the Coronation of Anne Boleyn 
as Queen of England takes place. The king sends the 
Bishops of Durham, Bath, and Winchester to Sir Thomas 
More to desire his attendance. More excuses himself, and 
stays at home. Before the end of the year a Convocation of 
the Clergy of the two Provinces decide, ' that the Bishop of 
Rome had received from Heaven no higher jurisdiction than 
any other foreign Bishop : ' and the Universities of Oxford 
and Cambridge follow their example ; while the chapters and 
collegiate bodies renounced his jurisdiction under their com- 
mon seals, and acknowledged the king's unqualified supre- 
macy. An act is then passed making it high treason to 
write or do anything impeaching the validity of the king's 
marriage with Anne Boleyn, and misprision of treason to 
speak anything : and all the king's subjects of full age were 



188 SIR THOMAS MORE. 

commanded to swear obedience to the same act, under the 
penalty of misprision of treason. 

More is also endangered by an attempt to involve him in 
the affair of the Maid of Kent, for which Bishop Fisher is 
imprisoned : indeed More's name was at first included with 
his in the bill of attainder framed on that occasion. 

The king flatters More. More is firm : More is silent. 
The king threatens More. More replies, ' Threats are argu- 
ments for children, not for me.' 

The Archbishop of Canterbury, the Lord Chancellor, the 
Duke of Norfolk, and Cromwell, are sent to influence him. 
More is calm and unembarrassed, and their mission vain. 
On More's return to Chelsea after the interview, Roper says 
to him, ' I hope all is well, since you are so cheerful.' More 
replies, ' It is so indeed, son, I thank God.' ' Are you then 
out of the bill of attainder ? ' 'By ray troth, I never re- 
membered that I was in it : I am so cheerful because I 
have given the devil a foul fall, and that with those lords I 
have gone so far as without great shame I never can go 
back again.' 

Henry is enraged at the ill success of his messages, and 
declares that he will go down to the house himself to secure 
the passing of a bill against More. The Lord Chancellor 
suggests to him when more calm, that he had better not, for 
that it was very likely the peers would not pass it notwith- 
standing — the virtue of More was so powerful. Henry 
yields, and sends the Duke of Norfolk to him once more, 
who begins with saying, l Master More, it is perilous striv- 
ing with princes : the anger of a prince brings Death.' ' Is 
that all that it brings, my Lord? something is sure to 
bring that some time : and the difference between you and 
me will then be but this : I shall die to-day and you to- 
morrow.' 

On the 13th of April More was summoned to appear before 



SIR THOMAS MORE. 189 

the Royal Commissioners at Lambeth to take the oaths 
relating to the succession, and to the ecclesiastical supre- 
macy of the king. More had expected the summons, and 
knowing what himself would do, and guessing what others 
would, he had been that morning to church to receive the 
Eucharist. On his return from church he found the king's 
officers searching his house, the king suspecting that he was 
not so poor as he seemed to be. As nothing affecting his 
outward estate could ever affect the serenity of More, he 
turned towards his daughter Margaret with a smile and 
said, ' I fear they will have nothing for their pains, 
unless they chance to light upon Alice's gay girdle and gold 
beads.' But on all else save the spoiling of his goods, he 
was not gay. He felt sure that if others were as deter- 
mined as he, this would be the last time he should look upon 
his home and all of living worth that it contained. His 
family as usual accompanied him to his barge. His custo- 
mary pleasantry was wanting to-day : he was nearer to tears 
than to smiles. He does not bid them farewell ; he only 
bids them go home and pray for him. He looks not behind : 
for some moments his manly heart is tumultuously moved, 
though by no visible sign betrayed, until he says with obvi- 
ous unburdened emotion, ' Son Roper, I thank our Lord the 
field is won.' When he appears before the Commissioners 
he consents to take the oath as far as the succession is con- 
cerned, but refuses to do more. He is committed to the 
Tower. 

For thirteen months More is kept in prison before his 
trial : and there are few revelations of the workings of any 
mind so worthy of our regard as those which we are per- 
mitted to have of More's during this period. I can only tell 
you of a few : but remember, the records of these are pre- 
served by those whose position and character are all that we 
could desire : and from the nature of the case, as well as of 



190 SIR THOMAS MORE. 

the man, on the part of him who is our study there is no- 
thing but truthfulness. 

His wife comes to him — a very ordinary woman — and 
says with commonplace vulgarity, ' How can a man taken 
for wise like you, play the fool here in this close filthy 
prison when you might be abroad at your liberty, if you 
would do but as the Bishops have done? Think of your 
large house at Chelsea, your library, your garden.' More 
said, ' Alice, is not this house as nigh heaven as mine 
own?' 

Margaret Roper, his eldest daughter — a far different 
woman, a gentle woman, a noble woman — comes to him, 
and there are scarcely anywhere more beautiful and touching 
scenes than those between him and her. They write, too, 
often. One of her letters ends thus : ' From your own most 
loving obedient daughter and bedeswoman, Margaret Roper, 
who desireth above all earthly things to be in (your ser- 
vant's) John a Wood's stead to do you some service.' And 
one of his to her thus : ' Mine own good daughter, this is 
.^written with a coal by your tender and loving father, who in 
his poor prayers forgetteth none of you, nor your babes, nor 
your good husbands, nor your father's shrewd wife neither.' 

Cromwell goes to him again : the Lords Commissioners go 
to him twice, and press the oath upon him earnestly: in 
vain. They now keep him from seeing his wife or children, 
and from church. But his daughter Margaret, by a curious 
artifice, gets leave to visit him in prison. The presence of this 
daughter was at once the source of the greatest comfort and 
of the greatest trial to him. Her own noble soul would not 
allow her indeed to suggest, much less to urge, any thought 
of dishonour upon her father; but at the same time her 
passionate idolatry of him made her state every argument 
which was used by his friends with a power which few con- 
sciences but More's could have withstood. What kind of 



Sift THOMAS MORE. 191 

reply More gave to them all, you may judge from this por- 
tion of one of her interviews which Margaret Roper herself 
records. 

' Daughter Margaret, we two have talked this thing over 
twice or thrice : and the same tale in effect that you bring 
me now, and the same fears too, you have brought me twice 
before and I have twice answered you, as I answer you now 
again, that if in this matter it were possible for me to con- 
tent the king's grace, and God therewith not be offended, 
then had no man taken this oath more gladly than I would 
do : as one that reckoneth himself more deeply bounden than 
any other to the king's highness, for his singular bounty 
many ways shewed to me. But since, standing my conscience, 
I can in no wise do it, and that for instructing my conscience 
in this matter I have not slightly considered, but many 
years advised and studied, and never yet could see nor hear 
the thing, nor I think ever shall, that could induce my mind 
to think otherwise, I have no manner of remedy. God hath 
placed me in this strait, that either I must deadly displease 
Him, or abide any worldly harm that, for any other sins, He 
shall, under the name of this thing, suffer to fall upon me ; 
which thing, as I have before told you, I have ere I came 
here not left unbethought or unconsidered, even the very 
worst and uttermost that can by possibility befal. And albeit 
that I know my own frailty full well and the natural faint- 
ness of my heart, yet if I had not trusted that God would give 
me strength rather to endure all things than offend Him by 
swearing ungodly against my conscience, you may be very 
sure I would not have come here. And as in this matter I 
look only unto God, it concerns me but little though men call 
it as it please them, and say it is no conscience but a foolish 
scruple.' 

Margaret suggests that very many good and great men 
have taken the oath, and that only one of all to whom it has 



192 SIR THOMAS MORE. 

been tendered has refused it, Fisher bishop of Rochester. 
More replies, l Verily, daughter, I would not pin my soul to 
another man's back, not even to the best man's that I know 
this day living, for I know not whither he might happen to 
carry it. There is no man living of whom, while he liveth, 
I can make myself sure. Some might act through favour, 
and some through fear, and so might they carry my soul 
some wrong way. — But in good faith, daughter Margaret, I 
can use no such ways in so great a matter : but as, if mine 
own conscience served me, I would not hesitate to do it 
though other men refused, so though others do it, I dare not 
do it, my own conscience standing against it. If I had, as 
I told you, looked but lightly on the matter, I should have 
cause to fear : but now I have looked on it so long, that I 
purpose to have regard to my own conscience only. (And 
as to what other men can do for me) by my truth, Margaret, 
I may say to thee in secret here between us twain, I have 
found the friendship of this world so fickle, that for anything 
I could pray, not one among them all, I ween, would go 
to the devil with me for fellowship's sake. Then verily, 
if there were twice as many more of them as there be, I will 
first have respect to mine own soul.' 

Margaret suggests that other wise men had changed their 
opinions. More says, 1 1 will not misjudge any other man's 
conscience, which lieth in their own breast far out of my 
sight. But this will I say, that I myself never heard the 
cause of their change to be any new thing found of authority 
further than, as far as I perceive, they had looked on and as 
I suppose very well weighed before. Now if of the self-same 
things that they saw before, some seem otherwise unto them 
than they did before, I am for their sakes the gladder a great 
deal. But as for anything that ever I saw before, at this 
day it seems to me as it did before. Wherefore though they 
may do otherwise than once they might, yet, daughter, 



SIR THOMAS MORE. 193 

I may not. As for such things as some men would haply 
say, why I might with reason less regard their change — 
any such opinions as these will I not conceive of them. I 
have better hope of their goodness than to think of them 
so. For had such things turned them, the same things had 
been likely to affect me : for in faith I know few so faint- 
hearted as myself. Therefore will I, Margaret, think no 
worse of others in the thing that I know not, than of that 
I find in myself. But whereas you think, Margaret, that 
there are so many more on the other side than on mine, 
surely for your own comfort must I disabuse you of that 
thought, which maketh you conclude that your father casteth 
himself away like a fool, jeoparding the loss of his substance, 
and peradventure his body too, without any cause why he 
so should for peril of his soul, but rather his soul imperil 
thereby too : to this shall I say to thee, Margaret, that in 
some of my reasons, I nothing doubt at all, that though not 
in this Realm, yet in Christendom, those well-learned and 
virtuous men still living who are of my opinion are not the 
fewer part. 

* But for the conclusion, daughter Margaret, of all this mat- 
ter, I tell you again as I have often told you before, that I 
take not upon me to define or dispute in these matters, nor do 
I rebuke or impugn any other man's deed ; but as concerning 
mine own self, for thy comfort I shall say to thee, daughter, 
that my own conscience in this matter is such as may well 
stand with my own salvation : thereof I am as sure as 
"hat there is a God in heaven. And therefore as for all the 
rest — goods, lands, and life itself — since this conscience is 
sure for me, I verily trust in God, that He shall rather 
strengthen me to bear the loss than against this conscience 
to swear and put my soul in peril. 

' And finally, Margaret, this I wot very well, that without 
my fault God will not let me be lost. I shall, therefore, 

N 



194 SIR THOMAS MORE. 

with good hope, commit myself wholly to Him. And if He 
suffer me for my faults to perish, yet shall I then serve for 
the praise of His justice. But in good faith I trust that 
His tender pity shall keep my poor soul safe, and make 
me commend His mercy. And therefore, mine own good 
daughter, never trouble thy mind for any thing that shall 
happen to me in this world. Nothing can come but 
what God will: and I make me very sure that whatsoever 
that be — in sight seem it never so bad — it shall indeed be 
the best. And with this, my good child, I pray you heartily 
be you and all of your sisters and my sons too comfortable, 
and serviceable to your good mother my wife. And of your 
good husbands' minds I have no manner of doubt. Com- 
mend me to them all, and to all my other friends, sisters, 
nieces, nephews, and all: and unto all our servants, man, 
woman, and child, and to all my good neighbours, and our 
acquaintance abroad. And I right heartily pray both you 
and them to serve God, and be merry and rejoice in Him. 
And if anything happen to me that you would be sorry for, 
pray to God for me, but trouble not yourself. Pray for me 
as heartily as I shall pray for all of you, that we may 
meet together once in heaven where we shall be happy for 
ever and ever, and never have trouble more.' 

On the 3rd of May, Cromwell and many with him visit 
More again in prison and urge him to swear. More replies, 
1 1 am the king's true faithful subject and daily bedesman : 
I say no harm, I do no harm : and if this be not enough to 
keep a man alive, in good faith I do not long to live. My 
poor body is at the king's pleasure — would to God my death 
might do him any good.' What could a man say better 
than this ? 

Archbishop Cranmer and others come to him : he is firm 
— silent. 

On the 6th of May, More is brought to trial at West- 



SIR THOMAS MORE. 195 

minster Hall. He — once the first judge in the land — is 
being tried for life or death. In a coarse woollen gown, his 
hair grown gray in prison: pale, weak, resting on a staff; 
with the same look he had when Chancellor, there he stands, 
silently eloquent. No such criminal had stood there before, 
nor any since. 

I will not lay before you much detail of the trial, but I 
will just tell you the kind of charges against More, and of 
what sort his answers were, and then you shall judge for 
yourselves what kind of trial it was. 

1st. That he had tried to dissuade the King from the 
marriage. 

Answer. That he had done so, but that he was officially 
the keeper of the King's conscience, and that it never could 
be treason for one of the King's advisers to give him honest 
advice. 

2d. That he had refused to give an opinion when asked 
about the right of the King to be Head of the Church. 

Answer. Silence is my right where speech will be injury 
to me. Silence is no sin ; at least no Treason. 

3d. That he had written treasonable letters to Bishop 
Fisher. 

Answer. I have not — produce them. (They could not.) 

4th. That he called the Act of Settlement a two-edged 
sword — which would destroy a man's soul if he complied 
with it, and his body if he did not. 

Answer. I did : and I think so now : and I choose, if you 
please, that my body shall be destroyed and my soul saved 
alive. I dare not court Death ; but I have faith enough in 
God that if He draw me towards it, He will enable me not 
to shun it. 

Judgment was given against him, and he was condemned 
to Death. More was allowed to speak. He said, ' Now that 
judgment is given I will say, after seven years' study I can 



196 SIR THOMAS MORE. 

find no colour for holding that a Layman can be Head of the 
Church. Nine out of ten Christians now in the world think 
with me. Nearly all the learned doctors and holy Fathers 
who are already dead agree with me : and therefore I think 
myself not bound to conform my conscience to the council of 
one Realm, against the general consent of all Christendom. 
More have I not to say, my Lords, but that as S. Paul held 
the clothes of those who stoned Stephen to death, and as 
they are both now saints in heaven and shall continue there 
friends forever : so I verily trust and shall therefor most 
heartily pray, that though your Lordships have now here on 
earth been judges to my condemnation, we may nevertheless 
hereafter cheerfully meet in heaven in everlasting salvation.' 

What could a man say better than this 1 I deem these 
words some of the noblest that have ever fallen from unin- 
spired lips. 

The Chief Justice then informed More that the King was 
graciously pleased, out of consideration for the high offices he 
had held, to commute his sentence to simple beheading. 
More bowed and said, ' I thank the King for his kindness, 
but at the same time I pray God to preserve all my friends 
from such royal favours.' They take him back to the Tower: 
Sir W. Kingston, Constable of the Tower, with tears running 
down his cheeks, conducts his prisoner. More comforts him. 
Kingston afterwards said, ' Indeed but I was ashamed of 
myself when I found my heart so faint and his so strong.' 

Margaret Roper, More's good angel, watches for his land- 
ing at the Tower wharf. Her husband writes : ' As soon as 
she caught sight of him, without care of herself, pressing 
through the midst of the throng and the guards that were 
about him with halberts and bills, she embraced and kissed 
him, unable to utter any other word than, ' my father ! 
my father ! ' He gave her his fatherly blessing — and 
they parted. But scarcely had she gone ten steps when 



SIR THOMAS MORE. 197 

she, all ravished with the entire love of her dear father, sud- 
denly turns back again, runs to him as before, takes him 
about the neck and divers times kisses him most lovingly — 
a sight which makes many of the beholders weep.* 

The Tower gates close upon him till the 6th of July. All 
manner of great people come to him meanwhile, and persuade 
him to give way. He is firm. 

On Monday the 5th of July he writes a farewell letter to 
Margaret Roper, with his usual pen of coal. It contains 
blessings to all his children by name — and even to one of 
Margaret's maids : and in it he says of his daughter's inter- 
view with him at the Tower wharf, 'I never liked your 
manner towards me better than when you kissed me last : 
for I love when daughterly love and dear charity have no 
leisure to look to worldly courtesy.' 

On Tuesday the 6th of July, S. Thomas's eve, 1535, Sir 
Thomas Pope, his ' singular good friend,' comes to him 
early with a message from the King and Council, to say that 
he should die before nine o'clock of the same morning. 

' The King's pleasure,' said Sir Thomas Pope, ' is that you 
shall not use many words.' f I did purpose,' said Sir Thomas 
More, l to have spoken somewhat, but I will conform myself 
to the King's commandment.' 

The Lieutenant brings him to the scaffold — which was so 
weak that it was ready to fall : More says, ' Master Lieuten- 
ant, I pray you see me safe up : and for my coming down 
you may let me shift for myself.' When he had laid his 
head upon the block he said to the executioner, ' I pray you 
wait till I have removed my beard: there is no need that 
you hurt it, for it has never offended his highness : ' 
one instant more and his head is on the ground — his soul in 
heaven. 

The chief use to us, as I have said, of meditating upon 
Great Men is to see how they viewed this life of ours, com- 



198 SIR THOMAS MORE. 

mon to them and us i to learn what Idea of God they had 
and of their relations to Him : of what Good is and what 
Evil : what True and what False : what Right and what 
Wrong. 

Of More's theoretic faith I have not much to say. It does 
not appear to have been much above that of those with whom 
he was accustomed most to associate. His peculiar strength 
did not lie here. He was indeed a very admirable specimen 
of a Roman Catholic layman of the sixteenth century : but 
he was not more than this. He was scarcely in mind more 
Catholic than Roman : though in heart he was indeed much 
more so. He wrote against the Reformation of Luther with 
no more insight or foresight than a contemporary Bishop. 

But turn to his practical character — to that which was 
deeper than his opinions — and there he is great and good 
indeed beyond most other men. There we surely have a re- 
markable instance of the supernatural strength which severe 
virtue gives a man — of the indefinite Force there may be in 
Character alone. Rate his Intellect as you will, what im- 
pressiveness is there in his Integrity, his Truthfulness, his 
Conscientiousness — his clear catholic soul, so wise in pro- 
sperity, so calm in danger, always so cheerful and so kind. 
Verily More's way of living in this world is worth studying. 
He presents himself always to me as one who had but a single 
aim in life — though that was indeed a comprehensive one — 
namely, to get himself into right relations with every thing 
around him, and especially to all that was above and within 
him : to be at peace with God and with his own conscience : 
to be at unity in himself and in harmony with all else. He 
was a man to whom the first of evils was not Pain but Sin : 
to whom the highest good was not Pleasure but Duty. He 
seems to me a man in whom dwelt continually a practical 
Faith far better and deeper than his verbal Creed : a finding 
a God ever present everywhere — as well in society and in 



SIR THOMAS MORE. 199 

business as in houses of worship and at hours of prayer : 
living ever in His eye and grateful chiefly for His care : not 
counting His commandments grievous but rather His service 
the only Freedom. The consciousness of an ever-present 
Deity and of an everlasting Future seems at all times so to 
have pervaded his mind as to have made him ever feel the 
difference between Right and Wrong to be altogether im- 
measurable, and the consequences of his actions to be chiefly 
developed hereafter : thus imparting to every portion of his 
life, even the most ordinary, a dignity quite impressive. 
There was no ostentation, however, about him : indeed he 
was natural and simple beyond all other men we have any 
record of: emphatically homely. He seems never to have 
recognised any distinction between public and private life : 
he always simply acted out himself: doing the most 
ordinary act from a sense of duty, and the most important 
with an appearance of ease. He kissed his children 
with almost a prayer, and laid his head upon the block 
with more than a smile. In fact Sir Thomas More was 
an instance of the rarest class of men : he was a Sym- 
metrical man : I mean by that, a man every part of whose 
nature is equally developed. He was a man of no eccentri- 
cities, or follies, or weaknesses, but well proportioned, well 
disciplined throughout : a man equal to anything : without 
intrigue, without fear : manly yet mirthful : going through 
this world as consciously on a journey to a better : with Duty 
as an ever-present Guide, and Peace as an inseparable Com- 
panion : equably and serenely good. Such a man was this 
Sir Thomas More : a man strong through integrity, clear- 
sighted from being single-eyed : the best type I know of an 
English Gentleman : accomplished in mind, dignified in 
deportment, of measured speech : unembarrassed, good- 
humoured : courteous yet straightforward : loyal, but ever 
serving his God with greater zeal than he served his King. 



200 SIR THOMAS MORE. 

Had More then no faults ? Yes, some, but not many : and 
perhaps as many fewer faults than most men as he had more 
virtues. He was a better man than any of his contempora- 
ries — every way stronger morally. Those who were wiser 
on some points w r ere weaker on all others than he. Who for 
instance of those who consented to More's death were supe- 
rior to him? Who would compare as a whole even Cran- 
mer with More 1 True, he was cheerful on the scaffold : but 
that is a sin too peculiar for me to blame. I only wonder 
too greatly either to censure or applaud. For that a man 
should die thoughtfully and yet cheerfully has ever seemed 
to me the greatest thing to be done on earth. You remember 
I told you when speaking of Great Men generally, that he 
who would die for his Conscience was even greater than 
he who would die for his Country : he who should suffer for 
Truth in prison and on the scaffold, than he who died amid 
the shouts of comrades in the battle-field. There is more of 
Mind in this death of More's than in any other I know of. 
A Martyr's death is the most imposing and every way 
grand : but there is in it an enthusiasm — a religious excite- 
ment — a supernatural fervour — a conscious inspiration — 
which ministers miraculous strength. But here in More's 
case there was little of this. He died simply because men 
would not let him live as he ever had done, truthfully. He 
did not bring this death upon himself by any act of his own 
— by doing anything at all, but simply by refusing to say 
something: something which he believed to be a He. He 
did not die in support of a Party, or of a Theory, or of any- 
thing in particular : but for the great human duty of not 
allowing the lips to belie the heart — of being a true man. 
He died a sacrifice to Duty, a martyr to Veracity. Indeed I 
deem it a great thing to do, to die as More did. A man who 
can die well, at any time or any where, he in my eyes is 
Great. To submit without a murmur to inevitable decay, 



SIR THOMAS MORE. 201 

indefinitely distant, or to be stricken down suddenly without 
quailing, this is great : but to leave the world with fore- 
knowledge of the day and hour, in the full flow of animal 
life, and in the maturity of all the faculties : not blindly 
and recklessly without thinking of anything beyond, but 
rather after deepest thoughts of such things and continual 
calm contemplation of the Unseen, and steady large faith in 
a living future — to do this is greater. Yes, I confess I 
peculiarly reverence a man who can so believe in God as to 
wish to die that he may know Him better : who can count 
the Seen not so satisfying as the Unseen : who has a desire 
to depart, in the faith that it will be far better for him. It is 
an awful thing — we will say at least it is a solemn thing — 
for any thoughtful man to Die : and to submit, or at most to 
acquiesce, is enough for most men. To die voluntarily is a 
remarkable attainment: but when sickness, or sorrow, or 
world-weariness, or old age comes before, it is less to be 
thought of. When, however, none of these things are Death's 
heralds, and joy and love and hope are around, it is much to 
be thought of. Indeed when a dark curtain is about us and 
we listless, Death may be yielded to as deepened Sleep : but 
out in the sunshine, and with passionate present Love all 
around, to choose to die when by the utterance of a word we 
might continue to live — to be and to do as Sir Thomas More 
— I know nothing greater than this. 

One word more and I have done. Though I thus hold up 
to you such men as Wycliffe and More, and others of wider 
fame, as Great Men, I do so rather as Attractions to Good- 
ness than as Models of it : as shewing you what has been 
done in particular cases rather than what must be done in 
all. And it is not so much the outward form as the inward 
spirit of these men's lives that I would direct your attention 
to ; nor is it the minor accidents and detail of their character 
that I would have you think much of; but specially its out- 



202 SIR THOMAS MORE. 

line of form, its general aspect and informing spirit. The 
most important thing to us in the history of any man is, the 
seeing what he practically felt to be his relations to God and 
God's to him : what most he hoped for, and feared and loved 
— what he thought good, thought great — his idea of the 
Highest and the Best. Every man has practically a rule of 
life — a law which he lives by, or at least gives evidence that 
he feels he ought to live by : and this, I say, it is of im- 
portance for us to discover and to study : not, indeed, as an 
ultimate standard for us to walk by, but as an auxiliary to 
our interpretation of the Divine Law common to us all — as 
an encouragement and confirmation for our own nobler aspi- 
rations — as an exercise of that sympathy with the good in 
us which ever imbibes an additional influence from others 
similar and proportionate to that which it imparts. A man's 
practical faith — not what he professes in words merely, but 
what he consistently shapes his conduct and his judgments 
by — this is the truest index of the man : this is what gives 
him his distinctive character, his real individuality. His 
most profitable interest for us, and his essential spiritual 
worth, lie in what his Belief makes him feel and do which 
he would not have felt and done if he had not thus believed : 
and our safest judgment of him is from observing the way 
in which he estimates things of which we also have our 
estimate ; the way in which he feels under circumstances the 
like of which we have known ; the way in which he acts in 
positions in which we can imagine ourselves to be placed. 
If a man discharges duties and bears burdens common in 
kind to all men but under uncommon conditions, and if he 
achieve what most men would not attempt, and thus render 
the seemingly impossible intelligibly practicable — this man 
is one into whose source of superiority it is verily worth our 
while to inquire. And when we do so, I believe that we 
shall find that his unusual strength was drawn out of the 



SIR THOMAS MORE. 203 

Invisible — his superior Force was the consequence of his 
superior Faith. Surely he must be the strongest and the 
bravest who believes himself to be in alliance with the Al- 
mighty — the commissioned Soldier of an Invisible King — 
the approved Servant of a Heavenly Master : nay, that large 
calm brave heart which is of right the Heroic, how can it 
come but by constant communion of purpose and of spirit 
with Him who is the Lord of Life and Death, and of all 
things pertaining thereto, and who is Himself the Supreme 
Justice, and whose name is the symbol of the Highest Good ? 
And again, if we see a man caring most for the things that 
are seen and temporal while he professes to believe that he 
himself is immortal : most anxious to lay up treasure on 
earth though he says that he believes that the one thing 
needful is treasure in Heaven : and though subscribing zeal- 
ously to a lengthened Theoretic Creed, never acting other- 
wise than if it contained no allusion to an Ever-present Eye 
— that man's Faith is vain ; it is no true presentation of the 
inner man — it is an Appearance and no more. For such 
the possession or the profession of even the purest and 
highest Creed can do but little : and I would even say that 
an impetuous, wilful, but courageous Luther : an enthusi- 
astic, exaggerating, but single-eyed Columbus : a warm, 
morbid, but self-sacrificing Xavier : yea, a barbaric, un- 
governable, but reforming Peter — all following untiringly 
through toil and even blood some Great Cause — are even 
in their weaknesses something better than the best of such. 
At their lowest there is always present with them — visible 
if not luminous — an idea of God and of His Universe higher 
and deeper, and larger every way, than it ever entered into 
such an one's heart to conceive. And one result I have 
ventured to hope for in these Lectures has been this : that 
we might learn to feel more that it is the spirit a man is of 
which is of most importance — that what we should mark 



204 SIR THOMAS MORE. 

and value most is rather the obvious aim of men's lives than 
the completeness of their attainments — the direction and 
tendency of their course rather than the number and regu- 
larity of their steps. Such is surely the Evangelical rule, 
which ever vindicates its divinity by doing as God does 
— regarding first the thoughts and intents of the heart, and 
giving to every man according to his Works and not 
according to his Words. And if on former occasions I have 
hoped that we might gain some enlargement of our sym- 
pathies by the contemplation of men of other lands whose 
fame is co-extensive with the civilization of our race, and 
might be in some degree impressed with the feeling that we 
are children of a Parent who has many others not of our 
Home — members of a Family consisting of many groups, 
each of which is diversely endowed and educated, and there- 
fore must be variously judged of by their brethren : so now 
I would presume also to hope that we may learn yet other 
lessons from the contemplation of those who are more nearly 
related to ourselves, even these : at what a price the glories 
we now inherit have been purchased for us by our fore- 
fathers : how solemn a privilege it is to be the countrymen 
and the heirs of a Wycliffe and a More : and that if the 
first of our blessings and the greatest of our glories is that 
of being Christians, the second is beyond all question that 
of being Englishmen. 



THOMAS CEANMEE. 



I am going to speak to you this evening of Thomas Cran- 
mer. His story, however, is familiar to you : probably so 
familiar that at first you may feel some surprise that I should 
include in my catalogue of Great Men one who was so con- 
fessedly deficient in several of the qualities which I have 
frequently represented to you as characteristic of those whom 
I think the most worthy of our admiration and our study. I 
acknowledge at once, then, that I do not bring him before 
you wholly for his own sake (though from peculiar sympathy 
with some parts of his character and opinions I think more 
favourably of him than most men do) but also very much for 
the sake of having an opportunity for laying before you some 
account of his times — a period of English history of exceed- 
ing interest to us — the great era of our Reformation. And 
truly the more I consider the events of modern European 
History, the more important seems to me this period of its 
Religious Reformation — a period the importance of which, I 
believe, it is more difficult to comprehend than to exaggerate 
— and which will grow to be recognised as of greater and 
greater significance as the history of the Church and of the 
world goes on. It was verily the grandest epoch in the 



206 THOMAS CRANMER. 

history of Human Progress since the Christian Era began — 
a new birth of Christendom — a step onwards for our Race 
well planted and irrevocable. For it was not merely a 
Eeformation of Discipline or an assertion of Independence 
of unjust ecclesiastical dominion, or an external conquest of 
any kind — it was not these things that made us Protestants. 
Such things as these have been done in various times and 
countries — before and since — by those who have been, and 
who are, among the most devoted members of the Roman 
Catholic Church. No : it was and is, our rejection of funda- 
mental principles of the Old Church — central, essential 
Doctrines — Sacramental and Sacerdotal claims ; it is our 
assertion of the Supremacy of the Individual Conscience, and 
of the Written Word combined, and the opposition, therefore, 
henceforth of the Rights of Private Judgment and the 
Sacredness of Personal Conviction to all the pretensions of 
Tradition and Authority — it is our emphatic denial of the 
mediatorial character of any human Priesthood, and of the 
efficacy of any vicarious or meritorious services of any kind 
save those of Jesus Chkist — it is the opening and making 
known a common highway into the hitherto half-closed City 
of God which no Keys on earth can henceforth ever lock up 
again — it is this which is the great Deed of Protestantism. 
Be sure of this, the ground of Protestantism lies deep — very 
deep — in the heart of man and in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. 
It lies in the fact that it returns the only satisfying answer to 
the ever-recurring question of consciously sinful humanity, 
What must I do to be saved? — the answer of the New Testa- 
ment — unalloyed by human traditions and ecclesiastical philo- 
sophies falsely so called — even this, Believe in the Lord Jesus 
Christ with all thine heart, as thou oughtest to believe in 
God — and by this faith, and by it alone, thou shalt be justi- 
fied from all things from which thou couldst not be justified 
by the rites and ceremonies, the penances and absolutions, of 



THOMAS CRANMER. 207 

any Church under heaven. These things, I must repeat, lie 
at the root of Protestantism ; and they are not dead dogmas, 
but germinant Principles, which have already brought forth 
much fruit, and are destined, I believe, to bring forth yet 
much more. Wherefore, I consider that it behoves every 
man sometime to ask himself deliberately the question, and 
as deliberately to answer it, Are these things a nearer ap- 
proach to the Truth of God than the things which went before 
them ? are they in substantial accordance with the Gospel of 
Christ ? and therefore, Is the Reformation so much for good 
as to be of God? I for my part, after long meditation on 
such matters, with deep earnestness answer these things with 
a Yes, and declare that the Reformation of the Sixteenth 
Century was a work so good and so Christian that I believe 
it even to be one suggested as well as sanctioned by the 
Divine Spirit, and that it is entitled to all the approbation 
which we may give to anything that has so much of the 
Human in it. I am not unconscious of its errors and defects, 
nor am I insensible to what we have lost as well as gained 
by it, but after repeated calculation of the cost of it, I still 
pronounce the gain to have immeasurably exceeded the loss : 
and therefore I can never consent to speak half-heartedly 
about it, or in any wise to attempt to explain it away, or to 
represent it as only an accidental and subordinate change in 
the old condition of Christendom. No : I accept the Reforma- 
tion in its broadest and deepest principles : I do not apologise 
for it, I glory in it: and at once acknowledge and declare 
that it was a Religious Revolution — an Ecclesiastical Re- 
bellion — a Spiritual Insurrection which was a Resurrection. 

And most inadequate do I deem any view of the Reforma- 
tion in our own country, which would make it different in 
kind from that which took place in Germany, and in other 
Protestant countries of Europe. Our English Church is 
essentially as Protestant as any Church, though the outward 



208 THOMAS CRANMER. 

form of our Protestantism is indeed very different from that 
of the majority of the European churches. Doubtless many 
of our English Reformers only intended so to reform as to 
leave reconciliation and re-union with Rome hereafter possi- 
ble ; and the course they almost all took was very different 
from that taken by almost all the Continental Reformers — 
building a new edifice on much of the old site, and with 
many of the old ecclesiastical materials, instead of clearing 
new ground, and using only such materials as were to he 
found provided in the New Testament — but the result has 
come to be the same with us as with them. For the spirit 
which dwells in our Church is as different from that which 
dwells in the Church of Rome as that of any Protestant 
Church is : and both England and Rome for three centuries 
now have so repeatedly reciprocated excommunications, and 
so equally and irrevocably repudiated each other's claims, 
that Re-union could only now be accomplished by annihila- 
tion of their individual existence, and absorption into some 
new community which should be so Catholic as to compre- 
hend them both. 

But though the result of our Reformation has been this, 
it has not been a sudden one : it has come to pass only 
gradually, and by the acts of both Churches rather than ex- 
clusively of either. The great Council of Trent fixed un- 
alterably the position of the Church of Rome, while our two 
Revolutions in the same century widened impassably the 
gulf which the Reformation opened, or at least for the first 
time very materially enlarged. For I would wish you very 
much to remember that even the Reformation was no sudden 
impulse — it was largely a consequence of what had been 
going on even for centuries before it. It was generally, I 
believe, the case in all the Reformations in Europe, that 
there had been long preparations for them — invisible to us, 
it may be, rather through the poor means we have of look- 



THOMAS CRANMEE. 209 

ing into those times than through their own insignificance. 
In the case of Germany, it is very instructive, and not very 
difficult, to trace the leaven of the New Doctrine for some 
time previously at work, though the outburst of Protestant 
feeling in Luther throws into the shade all other preliminary 
efforts. The political and social condition, too, of Germany 
made the positive element of Reformation of much more 
rapid development than the negative, and thus gave it a 
character greatly differing from ours. For I wish you to 
notice that in almost all Religious Reformations there are 
generally two elements — a negative and a positive one — a 
destroying and a creative one, if I may so speak : the first 
a resistance to all unjust claims of authority, and a protest 
against practical abuses : and the latter the assertion of new 
or neglected truths, which by their mere reception require 
the removal of much of what they mingle with — dispersing 
old errors as light does darkness, and removing old boun- 
daries as any elevation does that of our horizon. And both 
these elements had long been at work in England : the latter 
certainly since the times of Wycliffe, the former from very 
long before. For though it can unquestionably be said with 
truth that the English Church from its first planting by 
Augustine to the times of Henry the Eighth was as integral 
a portion of the Roman Church as any other Church, yet 
there were certain exemptions which it claimed from Roman 
Jurisdiction — certain limits to its obedience to the Papal See 
— winch were contended for and maintained with great and 
growing spirit for many centuries before the final schism. 
Long before Wycliffe even — in whose Life we have so lately 
seen the bold resistance which Englishmen made to many of 
the claims of Rome — throughout the lives of Lanfranc, 
Anselm, Becket, and Langton, all Archbishops of Canterbury 
— we see a continual contest and conflict between the kingly 
and the papal, the civil and ecclesiastical powers : while 

o 



210 THOMAS CRANMER. 

after Wycliffe's time this spirit of resistance seems to have 
made such steady progress, that it gradually, and even natu- 
rally, terminated in the Royal Supremacy. And this kind 
of contest was not exclusively a British peculiarity. Va- 
rious countries had their own similar national privileges and 
immunities, which they also defended with a jealous vigour. 
France had very prominently, and so had also even Spain : 
and yet more remarkably most of the States of Italy : indeed 
I believe that the submission to Papal claims, though ulti- 
mately yielded more unconditionally, was also yielded later 
and more reluctantly in some Italian States than in any 
other portion of Christendom. 

And the positive element of Reformation, as I have called 
it, this also was not wanting in England before the times 
we are to speak of this evening. Certainly since the times 
of Wycliffe, and probably before, there had been a leaven of 
true Doctrine at work among the English people, which a 
gifted eye might have seen from the first would not cease its 
energy until it had leavened them nearly all. Wycliffe's 
Bible, and the books it had given birth to, continued to be 
for long a secret treasury of Faith and flowing fountain of 
Truth, to many of the people : and the Persecutions to which 
his followers were subjected by their enemies, were a Provi- 
dential means of keeping lively and firm this Puritan Prin- 
ciple. For indeed there is nothing that we may reckon a 
greater gain for a good cause, than that it should be occa- 
sionally persecuted : especially in a Religious cause the dres 
of martyrdom do as it were burn in an impression of the 
Truth into the minds of its disciples, while they brand its 
opponents with a character which repels conversion. And 
this gain had been granted liberally from Henry the Fourth's 
time to Henry the Seventh's : and just before our Schism 
with Rome, many had been imprisoned and burnt for merely 
reading and possessing Wycliffe's Bible. How little, how- 



THOMAS CRANMER. 211 

ever, this dismayed the followers of the purer Faith we see 
from the fact that some years before Cranmer could get per- 
mission to have the Bible re-published in English, there had 
been more than one edition of a new Translation of the New 
Testament in English — by Tyndal and Coverdale — though 
through fear of hindrance these were printed by them abroad. 
And the reading of these Testaments, and of the many small 
religious books founded on this reading, which were now 
largely circulated by means of that Instrument of many Re- 
volutions — the Printing Press — had in some considerable 
degree prepared the minds of large numbers of the people for 
the reception of that fuller truth which those whom we espe- 
cially term our English Reformers publicly proclaimed. 

Not however, I must add, that these Reformers can justly 
be considered mere disciples of Wycliffe's. The rather these 
men came to the same kind of conclusions by study in a 
great measure independent. The New Learning — the study 
of Greek, which you will recollect we noticed as a novelty in 
the case of Sir Thomas More — was just at this time being 
opened out to Europe, and it was eagerly taken up in Eng- 
land, as it was in France, and Germany, and Italy. And 
among its chief students with us were, Hugh Latimer, and 
Nicholas Ridley, and Thomas Cranmer — precisely the three 
men to whom our Reformation was the most indebted. 
These men were naturally led by their new study into an 
examination of the original source of Christian Faith and 
Duty — the Greek Testament — and such examination alone 
was sufficient to bring them immediately to a perception of 
the discrepancy between the original and the existing 
doctrine: and through many a doubtful and devious way, 
ultimately to the recognition of those Great Principles which 
are characteristic of all the Reformed Churches. 

And now I will delay no longer to speak of that one of 
these our Reformers who has been permitted in God's Pro- 



212 THOMAS CRANMER. 

vidence above all others to influence — for nearly three 
centuries now — the ecclesiastical history of our nation. 

Cranmer was born six years after Luther, and for the first 
forty years of his life was undistinguished from any other of 
his educated contemporaries. He was the son of a gentle- 
man in Nottinghamshire, and brought up at the school of his 
native village (Aslacton) on leaving which, he went to 
Jesus College, Cambridge. Here he becomes a fellow : 
vacates his fellowship by marriage : and on the death of his 
wife shortly after, is restored to it. He then takes orders, 
and lives a quiet, studious, collegiate life : full of lectures 
and examinations, and doing such kind of business exem- 
plarily : a man we may say fairly prosperous in the world, but 
not very i not very clever, not very good : a moderate man 
in every way : a specimen of an average College Tutor of 
the Sixteenth Century. And in this way he lives — appa- 
rently contentedly — for twenty years: indeed he has been 
six and twenty years at Cambridge altogether, when a great 
epidemic sickness breaks out there, and he goes to the house 
of a Mr Cressy at Waltham Abbey, with two sons of that 
gentleman who were Cranmer's pupils at college. While 
here, Henry VIII. passes through Waltham on a Progress 
which he is just now concluding, and stays a night there. 
Two of his suite — his secretary and his almoner — Gardiner 
and Fox — are guests of Mr Cressy's, and at supper they 
converse much with Cranmer — naturally enough about the 
great question of the day — the Divorce. Finding him a 
scholarly, thoughtful man, they press him for an opinion 
about it. Cranmer without hesitation says, that it appears 
to him that the only real difficulty there could be in the 
matter must lie in the just interpretation of what the Bible 
had pronounced on it, and that the most obvious way of 
resolving this would be by obtaining the opinions of those 
who had made the Bible their chiefest study — which were 



THOMAS CRANMER. 213 

certainly the Universities of England and of Europe. He 
therefore would suggest that the opinions of the principal 
Universities and Divines of Europe should be collected, and 
then, if they were nearly unanimous, and on the King's 
side, the King would have a much firmer standing in any 
measures he might press upon the Pope, and even be not 
without some justification in acting without the Pope's 
dispensation if it were ultimately denied him. This is new 
light to them. So they report their conversation at the 
supper-table to the King. The King thinks highly of it, and 
instantly exclaims in his usual way, ' That fellow has got 
the sow by the right ear: bring him here.' So Cranmer 
comes before the King, and the King is pleased with him, 
iand orders him to put his opinions into writing, and make a 
book of them. This Cranmer now sets about, and soon his 
book is done — in which book it is maintained, that the mar- 
riage of Henry with Catharine is condemned by the authority 
of the Scriptures, the Councils, and the Fathers; and also 
that the Pope has no power to dispense with the require- 
ments of the Law of God, and therefore not to give validity 
to a marriage which that Law prohibits. Now it appears to 
me that Cranmer's judgment here was a very unsatisfactory 
one, and a very confused one : wrong in its principles, 
right in its processes: ecclesiastical logic, not evangelical 
morality: a notable, lamentable instance of the triumph 
of the Letter of Rule over the Spirit of Law — much 
to be avoided. More's judgment here was surely better: 
and on other grounds than his I should suppose that 
maturely cultivated and Christian minds would now agree 
with him and disagree with Cranmer, and perhaps even 
not think it right to entertain the question. But at that 
time minds of great culture, and very Christian, did entertain 
the question, and did decide it in favour of a Divorce. The 
English Universities and six foreign ones thus decided, be- 



214 THOMAS CRANMER. 

sides a good many individual Divines, and the Convocation 
of the English Clergy. It is Cranmer naturally enough who 
is now sent (with Lord Wiltshire, also naturally enough, as 
he is the father of Anne Boleyn) on a mission to the Papal 
Commissioners : and then to collect the judgments of the 
Universities and Divines : and then also to the Emperor 
Charles V, His mission both to the Papal Commissioners 
and to the Emperor were, as might be expected, unsuccessful : 
as Charles V. was the nephew of Catharine, and the Pope 
(Clement VII.) was now virtually a prisoner in the Emperor's 
power. But though his mission is for these purposes ineffi- 
cient, it is highly profitable to himself personally : for he has 
intercourse with Erasmus, and Ecolampadius, and Bucer, and 
Melancthon — and his converse with these so enlarges his 
mind, and enlightens it, that the whole course of his after- 
life is most materially affected by it Even for the present 
it takes sufficient effect upon him to encourage him to marry 
the niece of Osiander — a measure which would probably not 
have been taken by any man situated as Cranmer was who 
could have looked into the future at all. But the fact was, 
that Cranmer was a man who was characteristically not far- 
seeing — a man always of closely circumscribed vision, but 
equally always of right intention : of clear though of near 
sight : wholly unambitious. And perchance no one was so 
thoroughly surprised and disturbed as he was, when just 
after his marriage, a king's messenger comes to him to sum- 
mon him home to be made Archbishop of Canterbury. 
Truly he is unwilling to take this great step : he feels he has 
no calling to it but the king's : no echo from within to a 
voice from on high : he has no aptitude, too, as he thinks, for 
being Primate of all England, and neither head nor feet 
fitted for walking, or even standing, in such high slippery 
places. He is just married too — which is against the law as 
a clergyman; against all precedent as an Archbishop : and 



THOMAS CKANMER. 215 

what he has seen of late of Rome has taught him that not 
much emphatically Divine is to be looked for from thence, 
while what he has seen in Germany has taught him that 
there true Light assuredly does shine. So he hesitates and 
does nothing — for seven weeks — hoping, he says, that the 
King would in the meantime appoint some one else. But 
this is not the case, and the King sends again and again to 
command him to return. Cranmer now makes an objection 
which he believes will be insuperable, namely, that if he is 
made Archbishop he will receive his office only from the 
King, and that he will not take the usual oath to the Pope, 
as he now is fully persuaded that the Pope ought not to 
have any such jurisdiction within the realm of England as 
that oath recognised. This makes Henry pause, and at the 
same time opens out new views of the future to him. He 
refers the matter to his highest legal authorities. These are 
Roman Catholic, remember. They suggest that the matter 
may be compromised by Cranmer's making a solemn public 
protest on the day of his consecration which should embody 
his peculiar opinions, but otherwise conform. Cranmer re- 
luctantly acquiesces. Henry sends for the usual Bulls to the 
Pope, and receives them, though the Pope would seem to 
have known the protesting peculiarities of Cranmer : and so 
Cranmer is consecrated Archbishop of Canterbury 30th of 
March, 1533. 

Now in all this affair we see, I think, the character of 
Cranmer very clearly displayed, and we are presented by it 
with a specimen of the whole course of his subsequent con- 
duct and character, not of the highest kind, and yet better 
perhaps than that of almost all the men by whom he was 
surrounded ; not lofty, yet by no means low. It was surely 
much above the average morality of his time, or of our time, 
or of any time, for a fellow of a small college at Cambridge 
to be sincerely reluctant to be made Archbishop of Canter- 



216 THOMAS CRANMER. 

bury : but at the same time it altogether falls short of any 
ideal heroism to accept so high an office only under protest 
against the oaths and signatures which you swear and sub- 
scribe in order to obtain it. Cranmer's mind, however, here 
and elsewhere throughout his history, is clearly shewn to be 
a merely scholastic one — pedantic — technical — magnifying 
the letter to the overlaying of the spirit: judging well ac- 
cording to its rules, but not judging its rules well : making 
more of precedents than of principles, and confounding the 
bye-laws of the Church with the great commandments of the 
Gospel — a common kind of college product in those days. 

But here again we must consider well that this or the like 
difficulty must have occurred at some point in this transi- 
tional stage of the Church's and the nation's history : and that 
such things as these are the great moral trials of Revolutions 
and Eeformations — exceptional cases in ecclesiastical and 
political matters which require a very patient and a very 
strong mind to judge of. While I cannot, therefore, here 
approve, neither can I condemn : indeed I am only careful to 
dwell upon this matter here in order to enter my Protest too 
against all vehement dogmatic denunciations of others in 
matters concerning which the standard of contemporaries 
was so different from our own, and their judgment so unani- 
mous, and to append to it the exhortation, that as something 
much better will be expected from us to whom something 
much more has been given, we should look to it well that in 
judging others we do not only condemn ourselves. 

And now Cranmer is Archbishop, he is at once plunged 
into difficulties, great and manifold. First of all there is the 
King's marriage with Anne Boleyn, which has already taken 
place privately (on the 25th of January) but which was not 
at the time known to Cranmer. One of Cranmer's first 
Archiepiscopal acts therefore is to write to the King, urgently 
to exhort him to take immediate steps for settling something 



THOMAS CRANMER. 217 

finally about this matter — as he seems to have two wives, 
and no one can say which of the two is his legal wife — 
which of them is not such. So the Convocation of the 
Clergy is summoned, and after debate, this assembly pro- 
nounces for the Divorce : and then Cranmer, on the 23d of 
May, publicly pronounces Henry's marriage with Catharine 
invalid from the first, and his marriage with Anne valid. 
On Whitsunday, 11th of June, 1533, Anne is crowned Queen. 
The Pope, however, pronounces the whole proceedings void, 
and threatens an interdict if they are not formally annulled 
before September. The King of France tries to mediate, but 
ineffectually. So on the 23d of March, 1534, England is 
Excommunicate. No earthquake followed that day, or the 
next : and here we are now spiritual freemen, and none the 
worse for not considering the Universal Supremacy of the 
Pope a Fundamental Article of Revealed Religion. 

And now Henry and Cranmer, Parliament and Convoca- 
tion, work awhile all together strenuously. All now unite 
in conferring upon the King the power of appointing Bishops 
without confirmation from the Pope, and the right of receiv- 
ing all pecuniary payments for ecclesiastical matters hitherto 
made to the Pope, and in passing an act legalising Henry's 
marriage with Anne Boleyn, and confirming the succession 
in that line, with an obligatory oath subjoined which is to be 
taken within a certain time, which declares the King of 
England to be ' The Head of all the people of England, as 
well Ecclesiastical as Temporal.' Declarations and Subscrip- 
tions ' that the Bishop of Rome has not any greater jurisdic- 
tion conferred upon him by God in this realm of England 
than any other foreign bishop,' are both required from, and 
given by, the Chapters and Universities and other Ecclesias- 
tical Corporations. All the Bishops — except Bishop Fisher 
— take the oath to the King as thus ' Head of the Church : ' 
and nearly all the clergy. All the great officers of the 



218 THOMAS CRANMER. 

Crown do — except Sir Thomas More. These two dissen- 
tients — men of the noblest hearts in England — are both 
beheaded for their refusal. 

But I must beg you especially to observe that at this 
time it was only the ecclesiastical claims, not the religious 
doctrine, of the Roman Church, that were protested against 
and rejected. Both Henry and Cranmer were in belief and 
practice at this time in communion w T ith Rome. Cranmer 
had not yet got rid of many errors — that of Transubstantia- 
tion, for instance — though he was losing hold of them very 
rapidly. And the claims which Henry made were by no 
means all new, or different in kind from those which had 
been made by his predecessors for some centuries now. The 
doctrine of the Royal Supremacy was debated very keenly, 
and in some degree asserted, as I have already reminded 
you, in Wycliffe's time. The act of Praemunire (which made 
the promulgation or execution of any papal ordinance without 
consent having been previously obtained from the King, a 
matter of confiscation and outlawry) was passed in Edward 
the Third's time (I think) and repeated not long after — in 
1392 at least. And Richard the Second and Henry the 
Fourth had both been ' Defenders of the Faith' before Henry 
the Eighth. Indeed we may say that before his time, too, no 
papal decree was of force in England unless it had also 
received the King's sanction ; and even in the time of Cran- 
mer's immediate predecessor, Archbishop Warham, this kind 
of Regal Supremacy was distinctly and repeatedly acknow- 
ledged. The peculiar step advanced and made good by 
Henry was — that the King might make laws for the Church 
which should be of force whether they had Papal sanction, 
or had not. The Clergy too now, at the instance of the 
King and Parliament, gave up the power they hitherto had 
exercised of making canons, or bye-laws ecclesiastical, with- 
out the King's consent, and acknowledged that no law of any 



THOMAS CRANMER, 219 

kind could be valid without the Royal approbation. It was 
in these two points that the peculiarity of the Royal Supre- 
macy consisted, as at this time established. 

And now when these matters are settled, or settling, Cran- 
mer applies himself to a measure which did more than any 
other to introduce a Reformation into England of far more 
importance than this ecclesiastical Protest — even a Doctrinal 
Protestantism. This measure was the translation and circu- 
lation of the Bible, in the English language among the Eng- 
lish people. He had always been at college a great student 
of Scripture (so much so as to have acquired the name of 
the Scripturist) and to have become noted for refusing men 
their degrees until they had studied it too: and he was 
versed, as I have already said, better than most men of his 
time in that which was then called the New Learning. On 
Cranmer's motion then in the December of this year, 1534, 
the Convocation voted an address to the King for an English 
Translation of the Bible. The King consents to this : and 
so Cranmer divides Tyndal's Translation of the New Testa- 
ment into nine or ten parts — which he distributes among the 
bishops, requiring that each of them should send back his 
portion as carefully corrected as he could procure it to be, by 
an appointed day. And this they do for the most part both 
zealously and well. You must understand that there had 
been Translations of the Bible, or at least of parts of it, in 
circulation before — but to a comparatively very limited ex- 
tent : and even the possession of these was very often the 
occasion of persecution. But now great use is made of the 
recent translation by Tyndal, who was the first to translate 
the Pentateuch and the New Testament from the original 
tongues (Wycliffe's being from the Vulgate) and Miles 
Coverdale, and Bilney, and Rogers, and other good men, had 
added to this translations of the other books, and got all 
published abroad lately under the fictitious name of Mat- 



220 THOMAS CRANMER. 

thews. Cranmer takes the greatest interest in this work, 
and when the first edition of his revised translation came 
out, he writes to Thomas Cromwell, ' I rejoice to see this 
day of Reformation which I conclude is now risen in Eng- 
land, since the light of God's Word doth now shine over it 
without a cloud.' And again, in thanking him for some help 
he had given in this matter, he says, ' Your lordship shall 
have a perpetual laud and memory of all them that be now, 
or hereafter shall be, God's faithful people, and the favourers 
of His Word. And this deed you shall hear of at the Great 
Day, when all things shall be opened and made manifest.' 
In 1540 there is a Royal injunction which required a Bible 
thus translated to be placed in every parish church in Eng- 
land. And in 1541 another edition is published with a 
Preface by Cranmer, — that which is now commonly called 
Cranmefs Bible, — which presented the Word of God to the 
people in a form they could very readily avail themselves of. 
Wycliffe in his Preface to his Translation of the Bible had 
said, ' Christian men and women, old and young, should 
study fast in the New Testament — should cleave to the 
study of it — and no simple man of wit, no man of small 
knowledge, should be afraid immeasurably to study in the 
text of Holy Writ.' And truly now such did so with an 
eagerness which it is hard to describe, but which it may not 
be hard for you to picture to yourselves, as it was like that 
with which the Israelites drank of the stream that flowed 
when the Rock was smitten. 

And Cranmer before this, and while it was going on, was 
preparing several works for the instruction of the people — 
not only with the King's consent, but also with his co-opera- 
tion. You will remember that King Henry VIII. had been 
some years now an author. He had written against Luther, 
and that a book by no means inferior to the average quality 
of books written in those days : and now (1540) he takes a 



THOMAS CRANMER. 221 

very intelligent interest in the books Cranmer is preparing, 
and writes a preface to one of them entitled, ' The Necessary- 
Erudition of a Christian Man.' In 1535 there had been 
published a book called ' The King's Primer,' which was a 
book of Private Prayer and Devotional Exercises in English 
— intended to be used both at home and in the Churches: 
for you must remember that the Churches were in those 
days — as they are always in Roman Catholic countries in 
these days — used as places of private devotion, even during 
the celebration of parts of the Public Ritual. And in 1537 
there had been published with the consent of Convocation a 
book called l The Institution of a Christian Man,' (this is 
commonly called the Bishop's Book) a book which we should 
not now-a-days call a very enlightened one (it making much 
mention of Images and Masses for the dead) but in some 
respects it was one better than the book to which Henry 
wrote the preface, and which was published after this, be- 
cause this latter one defined and inculcated strictly Transub- 
stantiation, which the Bishop's Book left wholly in silence. 

The King, too, in the last year of his reign orders Lessons 
from the English Bible to be read in the Public Worship, 
and the Litany to be said in English which had hitherto 
been said in Latin. This Litany was translated, and it may 
be somewhat altered, by Cranmer. It was, however, nearly 
the same as ours is now — only after the Invocation of the 
Holy Trinity, there followed three other invocations to the 
Virgin Mary, the Angels, and the Patriarchs, Prophets, 
Apostles, and Martyrs, to pray for us : and also where we 
now pray to be delivered from 'sedition, privy conspiracy, 
and rebellion,' these words were inserted, ' From the tyranny 
of the Bishop of Rome, and all his abominable enormities, 
Good Lord, deliver us.' 

But it must not be forgotten that while these things are 
going on in favour of the Reformation, there were fearful 



222 THOMAS CRANMER. 

drawbacks proceeding from the same royal right hand. And 
among these may in some respects be classed — what in 
others was a gain — the Destruction of the Monasteries and 
the confiscation of all the property belonging to them to 
private purposes. Cranmer earnestly tried to get some of 
the monasteries in each county left as Colleges or High 
Schools : and the exertions which he made in this cause 
against the King's wishes are highly honourable to him. But 
indeed it was not wholly Henry's doing : for most were dis- 
solved by Act of Parliament, and that, it should be remem- 
bered, a Parliament in which in the House of Lords there 
voted more Spiritual peers than Temporal. 

And again the same Parliament which decrees that the 
King's Proclamations shall have all the force of Laws, makes 
certain Articles of Faith punishable with burning, and all 
the penalties of Felony. This law was previously proposed 
to the Convocation, and opposed by Cranmer. But the noto- 
rious Six Articles pass in 1539. Cranmer's conduct here 
again was as good as could be. He spoke for three whole 
days consecutively in the House of Lords, and when he was 
commanded by the King — who went down to the House on 
purpose to get these Acts passed — to leave the House before 
the Bill was put to the vote, he resolutely refused, saying 
before all, ' that this cause was not his own to stand to or 
desert at his will, but the cause of God, which must be stood 
by : and he would do so.' He did so, and voted against the 
bill. In consequence of the passing of these l Six Articles ' 
Latimer is imprisoned and resigns his bishopric : and Cran- 
mer separates from his wife. And various persecutions 
and limitations of religious liberty now take place. And it 
should be mentioned that so great was the opposition and 
hatred to Cranmer for his reforming proceedings that his life 
was now more than once conspired against. On these occa- 
sions Cranmer convicts and pardons his enemies: and so 



THOMAS CRANMER. 223 

gentle and affectionate was his spirit that it became quite a 
popular saying, ' Do my Lord of Canterbury a shrewd turn, 
and he will be your friend for ever.' There was one notable 
instance of this in 1546, when a conspiracy (revealed to him 
by the King, who was always faithful to Cranmer though 
never to any one else) was got up against him by two of his 
most intimate associates : one Thornden, his suffragan Bishop 
of Dover, whom he had himself promoted : and the other 
his own legal adviser, who formed a part of his permanent 
household. Having received indubitable proofs of their 
guilt, he leads them aside into his garden, and shews them 
their own letters, put into his hand by the King himself. 
They fall upon their knees, and beg his forgiveness. He 
tells them to rise, and to go and beg forgiveness of God — 
they need no other. Truly this was a Christianised spirit — 
a noble one — for it was a charity that he knew might cost 
him his life. 

In 1547 King Henry dies — a few months only after 
Luther. And on the accession of Edward, the Reformation 
goes forward rapidly. The Parliament meets immediately, 
and repeals all acts against heretics — especially the Six 
Articles. The Bishops, too, now take out new patents from 
the Crown, and are nominated by it absolutely, without any 
intermediate process — as the Irish Bishops are to this day. 
A Committee of Bishops and Divines is appointed to take 
counsel concerning changing the Mass into a Communion. 
And a temporary Book of Communion is published, and first 
used at Easter 1548, allowing the Communion for the first 
time in both kinds to all — a Book which was indeed a great 
improvement upon all that went before, but yet very far from 
as good as that which we have now. A Complete Book 
of Common Prayer is begun to be compiled by Commis- 
sioners at Windsor on the 9 th of May of this year : and this 
is finished, and receives Parliamentary sanction by the " Act 



224 THOMAS CRANMER. 

of Uniformity" 21st January 1549 : and is solemnly used in 
S. Paul's Cathedral on AVhitsunday following. Truly this 
may be justly called (as it has been) a new Day of Pentecost 
for England — a day in which the wonderful works of God 
should be spoken of henceforth unto the end of time, in all 
the solemnest and sacredest utterance of their hearts, in the 
tongue wherewith Englishmen are born. 

Now ever when we think of Cranmer, let us think also of 
this Prayer Book of his — of ours. Not that it was of Cran- 
mer's composition — we may be very thankful that it was not 
— but it was greatly influenced by him for good : it was by 
his anxious care that it was framed, and much gratitude do 
we owe him for his share of it. But the fact is — and the 
blessing is — that this Prayer Book of ours is no one man's 
work, but many men's : the creation of no one age, but the 
contribution of all the Christian ages. It is a collection of 
the devotional utterances of the very best Christians of many 
Churches — the most truly Catholic composition that is ex- 
tant in the world. It thus can rightly be associated with no 
human name : it is, as it ought to be, the anonymous accu- 
mulated Sacrifice of the whole Soul of Christendom. Thus 
our Prayer Book is unique: it is a separation of what is 
truly Catholic from what is Roman, or in any way national, 
or local, or sectarian : and all in such English as is a vehicle 
fitted by its purity and nobleness for the thoughts and feel- 
ings it conveys. Let us thank God for so inestimable a 
gift, not only with our lips but with our lives. 

In 1550 Cranmer publishes on his own authority and 
responsibility one of the most important of all his works — 
a Book on the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper. Gardiner 
replies to Cranmer's book: and Cranmer replies again to 
Gardiner's : and these form a most explicit and elaborate 
statement of his doctrine on this, and many other points, 
which heretofore were obscurely stated by him, and indeed 



THOMAS CEANMEB. 225 

very doubtfully entertained : for Cranmer, as Luther and 
almost all the early Reformers, it cannot be too frequently 
repeated, came only very gradually to a clear vision of 
Evangelical Truth. 

In 1552 Cranmer publishes a new edition of the Prayer 
Book, which is very nearly the same as that which we have 
now : only without The Prayer for all Conditions of Men, 
and The General Thanksgiving, which were not added until 
after the Restoration. 

And now also under Cranmer's direction a London Synod 
draws up Forty-two Articles of Religion, which receive 
Royal authority in 1553. Among these were four Articles 
that are not now included in our Thirty-nine : and there 
was not among these one which we now have in ours, that 
on the Holy Ghost. The Four Articles omitted were in 
substance affirming : 

1. That the Resurrection is not passed already. 

2. That the soul does not sleep until the Judgment. 

3. That the notion of a Millennium is a Fable derived 
from Jewish Traditions, and against the sense of Scripture. 

4. That it is a grievous error to teach that all men shall 
be saved at last. 

But so great is the diligence of Cranmer — so full is he of 
schemes of Christian usefulness — that it is wholly out of my 
power even to name them all to you. Those only which 
came to nothing, would have constituted the labour of an 
ordinary life. But I should have mentioned already that he 
has drawn up a Book of Homilies, writing three of them 
himself — those on Salvation, and Faith, and Works: and 
that he has long been in correspondence with the Reformers 
of the Continent, attempting to form an Union with the 
Foreign Protestant Churches. And now in this year — 1553 
— the King himself w T rites to Melancthon to come over. He 
does not come, but many others do, and Cranmer gives them 

p 



226 THOMAS CRANMER. 

positions of usefulness in the Church and the Universi- 
ties: Martin Bucer, for instance, being made Professor of 
Divinity at Cambridge, and Peter Martyr being licensed to 
deliver lectures at Oxford. But all these things, I should 
add, he does not do without strenuous opposition from many 
of his Bishops, or without able help from others — especially 
from one — Ridley, now Bishop of London. 

On Edward the Sixth's death (in July 1553) fresh troubles, 
and of another kind, begin for Cranmer. You will remember 
that Cranmer took the side of Lady Jane Grey, against 
Mary. It is said that he had reluctantly yielded to the 
dying request of the King after he had opposed the measure 
in the Council, and that he was never allowed a private 
interview with Edward in order that he might retract his 
promise to him, as he wished to do. The scheme indeed 
seems unwise to us looking back upon it, but before forming 
our judgment respecting Cranmer's share in it, we should 
remember that this proceeding had the sanction of all the 
Judges (except one, Hales) — that Lady Jane Grey's husband 
was his declared enemy — and that the case very closely re- 
sembles that of the succession of William III., afterwards 
adopted with success. It seemed, too, very probable that by 
so doing he would seal his own condemnation : for there 
could be little prospect of the plan succeeding, and Mary was 
not likely to overlook the conduct of so Protestant an Arch- 
bishop, and one who had given sentence against her mother. 
And so, as you know, it came to pass. Many Bishops are 
immediately deprived and imprisoned. Cranmer is urged to 
fly while he may. He replied, " If I was accused of parri- 
cide, or any such crime, I might perhaps be induced to fly, 
though innocent. But now that it is a question of my faith 
not towards man but God, and of the faith of Holy Scripture 
against Papal errors, I am resolved to act with the constancy 
that becomes a Christian prelate, and to quit my life rather 



THOMAS CBANMEB. 227 

than my country." He therefore sets his house in order — 
pays all his debts — arranges all his worldly business — and 
awaits his fall. It comes speedily, but scarcely in the way 
he had expected : for few could have expected that it would 
have come through that same suffragan of his whom he had 
forgiven for conspiring against his life before — the Bishop of 
Dover. But the occasion mattered little, for if it had not 
been on this, it would assuredly have been on some other. 
And so now Cranmer is imprisoned in the Tower of London. 
The number of his fellow-prisoners, however, is so great that 
he is obliged to share the same apartment with — whom do 
you think ? — Ridley, Latimer, and Bradford. Happy provi- 
dence — for these great hearts now impart spiritual gifts to 
each other largely. They are removed from London to 
Oxford : and here a deputation from the Convocation dispute 
with Cranmer, Ridley, and Latimer — a day with each — April 
1554. They arc then asked if they will subscribe certain 
articles embodying Transubstantiation. Each having an- 
swered that he will not, sentence of Excomunication is 
read over them, and they are remanded to prison. And for 
a year and a-half they are kept here. You will do well 
to read a little book that Miles Coverdale made of the letters 
they now wrote. 

During this time, you will recollect, Mary was married to 
Philip of Spain — a fearful persecutor — son of the Emperor 
Charles V. (July 1554): and this greatly strengthens the 
hands of the Catholic party. The Commons and Lords sue 
for Reconciliation with Rome, and receive it through Car- 
dinal Pole, and there is a National Thanksgiving on the 
occasion, and a formal Absolution. And then Persecution 
begins afresh. Three hundred persons are burnt one after 
another — and thirty thousand are said to have suffered exile 
or spoiling of their goods — for Protestantism — its enemies 
being the accountants. In the February of the new year, 



228 THOMAS CRANMER. 

John Rogers, John Bradford, Bishop Hooper, and Rowland 
Taylor — very reverend names — are burnt with many others, 
with a cruelty on the part of their enemies, and a fortitude 
on their part, which do much to strengthen our faith in a 
Future Judgment. Then on the 15th of October, Latimer and 
Ridley are burnt at Oxford, Latimer prophesying as he died, 
" Be of good comfort, Master Ridley ; we shall this day light 
such a candle, by God's grace, in England, as I trust shall 
never be put out." Cranmer's final trial is yet further de- 
ferred until February 1556, when he is tried before a Papal 
Commission. Now Cranmer three several times signs papers 
which generally and vaguely imply a submission to the Pope 
as Head of the Church of England, and that he ought to be 
so, as his being so is now in accordance with the will of the 
Queen of England : but he will do no more than this, and 
when brought on the 14th of February into Christ Church, 
Oxford, he appeals in all matters of doctrine from the Pope 
to a General Council. So far only now, I say : but on the 
16th he himself draws up and signs a Paper in which he 
asserts his belief in " all the Articles of the Christian Religion 
and Catholic Faith, as the Catholic Church doth believe, 
and hath believed from the beginning." And before the 
12th of March he has signed another Paper, which " ana- 
thematised the heresy of Luther and Zwingle, acknowledged 
one only Church of which the Pope is Head, as Vicar of 
Christ, to whom all the faithful must submit themselves : 
admitted Transubstantiation, Seven Sacraments, Purgatory, 
and Prayers to Saints, and acknowledged that he agreed in 
all things with the belief of the Catholic and Roman 
Church." Sad is this, most sad : and useless too, for no 
Reverse of Sentence follows this Recantation of Opinion. 
Cranmer is left by the Queen to die. 

' On the 21st of March, Cranmer is brought from prison into 
St Mary's Church, no longer dressed as a bishop, but clothed 



THOMAS CRANMER. 229 

meanly, and as a common culprit. There is a vast con- 
course, and pressure — the people expecting that he will read 
now publicly this last Paper that he has signed. So he 
is placed on a platform opposite the pulpit, and during a 
sermon which is now being preached, Cranmer is seen to 
weep bitterly. When the sermon is over, and all is silence, 
Cranmer takes a paper and reads it as he stands — it is a 
Prayer merely : and then he kneels down and says the Lord's 
Prayer, and all the crowd of the congregation kneel too, and 
join in it aloud. Rising he draws forth another paper, and 
begins to read. This clearly is his dying speech : the 
crushing crowd are hushed, and in breathless suspense : they 
hear him at first but faintly, but what they miss is but of 
general exhortation : they grow restless with the pain of the 
pressure, but they now hear him saying the Apostles' Creed, 
and having done it he speaks louder, saying that he now 
comes to that great thing that so much troubled his conscience 
above anything he has done or said in his life past. And 
now the strain of body and of mind is at its height : it can- 
not endure long, but all is quite still while he says : — 'And 
that is, the setting abroad of writings contrary to the truth 
which I thought in my heart, and written for fear of death, 
and to save my life, if it might be ; I mean, all such bills 
and papers as I have written or signed with my hand since 
my degradation — wherein I have written many things un- 
true. And forasmuch as my hand offended, writing contrary 
to my heart, my hand shall first be punished therefor, for 
when I come to the fire it shall first be burned. And as for 
the Pope, I refuse him as Christ's enemy and Antichrist, 
with all his false doctrine. And as for the Sacrament, I be- 
lieve as I have taught in my book against the Bishop of 
"Winchester, the which my book teacheth so true a doctrine 
of the Sacrament, that it shall stand at the last day before 
the judgment of God, when the papistical doctrine contrary 



230 THOMAS CRANMER. 

thereto shall be ashamed to shew his face.' He can scarcely 
make these last words heard, for all cry out against him, 
and accuse him of falsehood and dissembling. He answers, 
1 Ah, my masters, do not take it so : always since I have 
lived, I have been a hater of falsehood and a lover of simpli- 
city, and never before this time have I dissembled' — and 
more : but all further was dumb show, his voice being over- 
whelmed with hootings and rude shouts. They hurry him 
away to the spot where his happier brethren had witnessed 
their confession. And here he now stands for a moment, 
covering his face, and then kneels and is wrapt in prayer. 
They place him at the stake, and the moment he feels the 
fire he thrusts his right hand into the flame, and holds it 
there unflinchingly, exclaiming often, 'This unworthy right 
hand ; ' and when it has been consumed, he says, - Lord 
Jesus, receive my spirit,' and expires. 

Such is the story of Thomas Cranmer — Archbishop and 
Martyr, as we say. A good man and a wise one, on the 
whole, I judge, though it may be not a strong man beyond 
others. But this matter of strength is one which will be 
very variously judged of according to the judge's own tem- 
perament and experiences. Mine lead me to say that Cran- 
mer has been harshly judged of on the whole and underrated, 
because the difficulties and burdens of a Religious Reforma- 
tion have been not adequately felt. In my judgment these 
are far greater and more harassing to an earnest and cul- 
tured mind than those with which a Civil Ruler or a Mili- 
tary Leader has to do. Not only is there a higher sacredness 
about the things with which such an one is conversant and 
the aims he has before him, but the effects of his measures 
tell instantly and permanently on men's souls — they are 
spiritual and they are everlasting. The doubts and fears 
with which such high blessings and hopes are associated — the 
having to move constantly amid springs which move infinite 



THOMAS CRANMER. 231 

issues — the awful unsettling of myriads of minds — the 
wrenching from them the supports they have heen bred up 
to consider as divine provisions for their spirit's needs — the 
turning them adrift on the great ocean of Free Inquiry with 
little more than Private Judgment for a compass — and all 
this done with a more vivid consciousness than others have 
of a Present and a Future Judgment of God — these things 
I should imagine were perhaps the very utmost pressure that 
a human spirit could bear. We indeed in our times must 
ever find it difficult even to imagine what this burden was 
to one who, like Cranmer, had been born and bred beneath 
the shelter of Infallibility. We live in times in which liberty 
of Dissent from received dogmas has come to be considered 
as a kind of indisputable birthright, and when the confusion 
of the counsels of the Doctors on almost every point affords 
not only a pretext for the superficial, but even a relief for the 
earnest, in the exercise of the awful prerogative of Private 
Judgment. But in Cranmer's time it was yet a fearful thing 
to do, to dissent from the great body of Christendom ; and 
quite different qualities were then required for the assertion 
of doctrinal or ecclesiastical peculiarities from those which 
now would suffice for even the most bold denial of the most 
sacred traditions. But even yet I believe that there are some 
who will understand how that, as there is no tyranny so 
great as that of soul over soul, so also is there no heroism so 
great as that which by mental conflict sets the bound in 
spirit free. However, in all cases this may be said, that the 
burden will be heavier or lighter — the struggle more or less 
severe — according to the degree of culture, and of native 
sympathy with spiritual interests, which may characterise 
the mind of him who is the agent of the Reform. In such 
case a Luther will feel less than a Cranmer : partly it is true 
because he has more faith and a clearer vision : but partly 
also because he has less culture and a more limited horizon. 



232 



THOMAS CRANMER. 



Luther too, had some peculiar advantages for his exercise of 
the strong will he was endowed with, from the thorough in- 
dependence of his position. Standing alone he could stand 
firmer. He was for a while the sole responsible agent in the 
great work of Reformation, and he originated nothing which 
he did not feel impelled to from within. He chose his field 
of battle, and his weapons, and his adversaries. And he had 
thus the consciousness that if he, one man, could fight and 
conquer myriads, it clearly was because his Cause was the 
cause of God. But most different from this was the case of 
Cranmer. He did not originate the movement which he was 
called upon to guide. He was necessarily but the agent of a 
higher earthly mind — sometimes even but its instrument — 
and that mind one bat very partially in unison with his own, 
or even in sympathy with the cause which he wished to pro- 
mote j at least it was but in full sympathy with one portion 
of that cause, and that the lower and more worldly. As- 
suredly too, we must never forget that Cranmer's task was a 
double one — that of a Statesman as well as a Reformer, and 
that of a Churchman as well as a Christian. And for such a 
task Wisdom was as much a necessity as Courage. Doubt- 
less it is the commoner exhibition (and one which must 
always command the sympathy of our hearts) to see men 
who are deeply impressed with a desire for Reformation — 
men of great daring and decision — willing even to stake all 
their earthly life on some one point which they deem Truth 
or Duty : but, alas, how often does after history pronounce 
such point to be certainly not one from which the World or 
the Church may be moved — a point only possible to have 
been considered as such by those whose vision was weak by 
nature or distracted by accident — and that clearly such as 
they were fitted only to work out their own salvation, and 
not largely to help others to do the like. Such men History 
honours, but at the same time buries. It needs men of 



THOMAS CRANMER. 233 

more and other gifts than those of courage and conscien- 
tiousness, to rule the ages that are to come : and while large 
measure of sympathy and of praise is allotted to those who 
Dare rather than who Do — who stake much that is personally 
valuable and gain little that is permanently so — we may 
not justly, I think, omit to give some tribute of our admira- 
tion to those who by sacrificing some of their own highest 
aspirations gain much more for others than they ever 
would have of themselves acquired. And this I think was 
the case with Cranmer. And how often do we hear it de- 
clared by statesmen of all times, that the man fitted to do 
good in a free country is one who shall exhibit such self- 
control and temporary tolerance of present abuses as may 
enable him ultimately to effect large reforms peacefully — 
one who will be content to achieve, or accept, instalments 
of possible good — and that it is only the weak that are 
passionate, only the inexperienced that are impracticable. 
Cranmer then ought, I conceive, to be judged in this way — 
more especially as he was a man all of whose opinions and 
professions would have made any other conduct in him in- 
consistent — his views as a Churchman harmonising precisely 
with his views as a Statesman. What Cranmer deemed 
most important in Christianity — so important as to be supe- 
rior in kind to all else connected with it — was its Creed and 
its Worship — all its Traditions which were not Scriptural he 
believed to be questionable, and all its Institutions which 
were not Sacramental he believed to be indifferent. He 
certainly did not believe that any scheme of ecclesiastical 
government was of exclusively Divine appointment, but 
rather that all were of God in proportion as they were 
for Good: therefore he could not consistently be expected 
to manifest any outbreak of enthusiasm to defend or push 
on any special plan amid all hazard and against all oppo- 
sition. And in addition to this it was an early and funda- 



234 THOMAS CRANMER. 

mental conviction of his that there was not only a Dignity, 
but also a Divinity, in civil relationships — a dignity and a 
divinity equal to that which there was in ecclesiastical : and 
that there was even about the Kingly estate a sacredness 
and supremacy which attached to no other functionary on 
earth. And the problem which he had conceived himself 
called especially to solve being that of remodelling the His- 
torical National Church of England, and not the construction 
of a new Church on any theoretical plan at all — he could not 
but allow himself in so doing to be swayed by a will — his 
King's will — which not only in itself was so strong, but 
also was presented to him under a character almost sacred. 
That Cranmer should have attributed, in a Constitutional 
Commonwealth like that of England, a sacredness to the 
Kingly function overwhelming that of the other powers that 
be in it — I indeed deeply regret — for this error of his bore 
most deadly fruit under the House of Stuart — but still it was 
with him so conscientious a conviction, and is one which has 
been deliberately shared by so many noble hearts, that ac- 
tions simply in accordance with it cannot be considered im- 
peachments of his integrity. 

But Cranmer was a Persecutor. In one sense he always 
was apparently : in one instance he certainly was especially. 
That instance far be it from me to defend : though even 
that should still be judged with reference to the general tone 
of feeling which characterised all men — even the best men 
— of his times. For until long after Cranmer's time English 
Protestants put to death their fellow Protestants : and abroad 
Calvin and Beza were what Cranmer was: and I believe 
that it is not untrue to say, that many of those who died so 
nobly for their own opinions, would not have thought it 
wrong to have made others die for theirs. Many of those 
who thus suffered would not have objected — or at least did 
not object — to being burnt if they were Heretics. They 



THOMAS CRANMER. 235 

never pleaded large principles of Toleration in their own 
case, or in that of others, but only special exemptions : not 
that Burning for Heresy was wrong, but that it was wrong 
to consider their opinions as Heretical. On all hands it is 
admitted that Cranmer's nature was abhorrent from cruelty, 
and some even think that he was a man below Revenge 
rather than above it. He strove hard to save Frith by per- 
sonal argument and persuasion, and More and Fisher and 
Cromwell — who were not, you must remember, put to death 
for their religion's sake — by earnest intercession with the 
King. No persecution indeed (save in one case) originated 
with Cranmer : he was but at most a passive persecutor : he 
consented to men's deaths when he could not prevent them ; 
allowing the law to take its course, and not striving to alter 
the law — this was I think (save in one case) the amount of 
Cranmer's Persecution. 

But Cranmer's Recantation — what is to be said of that ? 
Why ? first of all, it is not to be denied — it is to be unreser- 
vedly and unequivocally admitted. Cranmer did Recant, and 
that simply from the hope of Life — from the fear of Death. 
And this was, it is fully confessed, a weak disappointing of 
our hopes from which we must withhold everything but our 
pity. But seeing how humbled he was for his weakness 
himself, and how afterwards he nobly recovered himself to 
constancy, I do not know that we need say more. It is by 
no means enough to obliterate a long catalogue of Christian 
graces, or to neutralise the effect of a whole lifetime of hard 
service, that a man in his old age cannot face fire without 
flinching. Better, indeed, and far nobler, they who with 
equal foresight of the Future, and with a greater assurance 
of Faith — as that army of contemporary Martyrs — can 
desire to depart and deliberately choose to die. No heroism 
can be greater than for a man in the fulness of his strength 
— his natural force not at all abated — in the midst of many 



236 THOMAS CRANMER. 

duties and many interests — loving and beloved — with large 
culture of the mind, and complex far-stretching sympathies, 
cheerfully to give up all at the first summons from within or 
clear call from above — either, like Elijah, to wait in open 
day for Translation in a Chariot of Fire, or, like Moses, to 
go up unto some mountain top and be no more seen. And 
our souls' deepest reverence be to such, for these are indeed 
the true Legislators and Prophets and Apostles of mankind. 
But let not all honour be denied to those whose spirit and 
whose flesh were both more weak, but yet who, amidst all 
the weakness of their nature, could endure great things 
which they might have avoided if they would not have 
witnessed for Truth, and whose consciousness of weakness 
and penitence for shortcomings, were of themselves large 
additions to their sufferings. Such surely may yet be reve- 
renced by such as we — we who live in days when absence of 
comfort is considered synonymous with positive hardship, 
w T hen elementary discipline is deemed a yoke too heavy for 
us to bear, and when we have almost lost the remembrance 
of the significance of a Cross. Verily it is not for us to judge 
even a Cranmer harshly : and it might help even the most 
self-relying to judge him more mildly if they thought more 
frequently of Peter. Well, like Peter, Cranmer fell, and like 
Peter, when fallen, weeping, he rose again to fall no more. 

Cranmer, then, on the whole I thus judge. He was a man 
scarcely to be fairly comprehended within my definition of a 
Great Man; but at the same time assuredly not harshly to 
be excluded. A man exercising large influence over his times 
— and those times the most critical of our history — and 
exercising this influence deliberately and thoughtfully, but 
waiting upon Providence rather than originating much him- 
self: a pilot in a storm rather than a commander in a battle, 
but this in a storm which he did not raise and which none 
but he perhaps could have steered through with the same 



THOMAS CRANMER. 237 

safety and the same success. A man truly of little animal 
hardihood, of languid temperament, and it may be too yield- 
ing : but always pliable through amiability rather than 
through subtlety: and if becoming too much to too many, 
yet always more for their sakes than for his own. Not a 
soldier but a scholar : a studious, gentle, considerate, rever- 
end man : constitutionally modest, conscientiously cautious : 
more naturally suited to administer with dignity and with 
wisdom a church that was already established, than by the 
vigour and prowess of resolute championship to wage life- 
long war for its establishment against all enemies. A 
man, finally, whose faults were mainly physical, and whose 
virtues were specifically spiritual — a man who, if we cannot 
call him Great in any assemblage of this world's Heroes, we 
may say, I think, has been and is and will be great in the 
kingdom of God in Earth and in Heaven. 

And now a few words on our English Reformation and I 
will hasten to a conclusion. No one of you then, I think, can 
have failed to notice how different in its origin and course our 
Reformation was from that in Germany. The German 
Reformation arose and was carried on very principally by 
individual Reformers — men in no kind of authoritative 
station, but the rather having against them all constituted 
authorities political and ecclesiastical. It was the working 
of Faith in Great Truths which originated and sustained the 
German Reformation : it was the practical revelation of a 
new Doctrine that overthrew the old Discipline : its changes 
were all wrought by individual Conviction and Conversion. 
It was no political or party movement : but simply and 
solely a Religious movement — a movement grounded on no 
limited principles, and arising from no local causes — but a 
matter of thoroughly human interest — intelligible to all 
Christians equally ; having its foundations laid deep in the 
very heart of man — in his sense of Responsibility, and in the 



238 THOMAS CRANMER. 

very essence of the Gospel — in its doctrine of Free Grace. 
Whatever might be the case with some of the subordinate 
and accidental accompaniments of this great fact — however 
much these may require, or admit of elaborate explanations, 
and all manner of philosophical or other exposition — you may 
be sure of this, that as far as its real essence and its funda- 
mental principles are concerned, it requires no subtle argu- 
ments, no fine writing, either to understand or to justify it. 
It was the cause of the Common people against all other 
kind of people — the assertion especially of the rights of the 
Laity against the claims of the Clergy — the proclamation of 
the supremacy of the individual conscience over all else, 
and of the Written Word over all ecclesiastical customs — 
the maintenance of the mere Gospel against all Traditions 
whatsoever. It was, in fact, an Insurrection of the oppressed 
Conscience of Christendom against ecclesiastical despotism, 
arid a Protest against the imposition for the future of any 
legal or outward yoke of bondage on those whom the Truth 
of Christ had made Free indeed. And as such it was 
preached from the first — only more and more distinctly and 
loudly as opposition waxed stronger and fiercer — and as such 
it has so approved itself to so many, that the Reformation of 
the Sixteenth Century no century that succeeds it will ever 
be able to counteract or to repeal. 

But the Reformation in England (though practically and 
substantially it has now, as I believe, come to the same 
issue) did not originate in the same cause, nor proceed in 
the same course. The Reformation in England was at first 
more political than religious — more national than Christian 
— and took its rise from the highest authorities of the State, 
and not from out of the midst of the people : In Germany 
the Reformation ascended from the people to their social and 
ecclesiastical superiors : in England it descended from these 
to the great body of the people : and while in Germany it 



THOMAS CEANMEE. 239 

was from the first and always most engaged with the pri- 
mary principles of the Gospel, and built up its new institu- 
tions on these alone — in England it was at first concerned 
chiefly with Discipline and Polity rather than with Doctrine 
and Worship — with matters of national and ecclesiastical 
interest rather than of thoroughly evangelical importance: 
and in the new order of things to which it gave birth, it 
proceeded on a most careful consideration of the relations of 
English life and history to those of past times and foreign 
connexions. In fact, in Germany the Reformation was a 
spontaneous impulse — doubtless in manifold inscrutable ways 
connected with much that went before it, but yet having no 
visible History — while in England it was preceded, as I 
said at first, by a long series of historical facts which all 
exercised a large and an obvious influence in producing 
those critical events which took place in the reign of Henry 
the Eighth. 

And this historical development of the English Reforma- 
tion gives a peculiarity to the. character and the claims of 
our English Church which I think it of the utmost import- 
ance that we should fully recognise and frequently consider. 
A few more words then on this subject and I will have 
done. 

I must at once say then that our present National Church 
is to me a matter of admiration and of thankfulness equally 
profound. I look upon it as a Providential Gift to this 
country of quite inestimable value, and I trust and pray that 
the present relations between the Church and State may 
substantially long be continued : and I deem it a privilege 
beyond all price, and a lot the highest that I covet on earth, 
to be one of its humblest and obscurest ministers. But while 
I so say, I think it but just for me also to say, that I can- 
not, and do not, make any exclusive claims for the Church 
of England — I cannot, and do not, represent it as having 



240 THOMAS CRANMER. 

any explicit constitution given to it by God — nor could I 
uphold it with the same fervour if there were not allowed 
both by it and by the State, full freedom of dissent from it. 
For truly it is a most notable characteristic of our Church 
that it is by no means a simple institution, but on the con- 
trary a very complex one : not merely Scriptural but also 
Historical : embodying in it traces of every portion, it may 
be, of our national existence. It always presents itself figu- 
ratively to my mind as an edifice of no one order of Architec- 
ture, but rather of very many and various orders — containing 
within it specimens and traces of almost every variety of 
style that has ever prevailed in England : of Roman as well 
as Gothic, of Saxon and Norman, of the Early English 
and the Decorated, of Tudor and especially Elizabethan. 
And not even only this, but it seems to me as an edifice not 
merely for worship, but also largely for social and political 
life: made up in part of the catholic cathedral, in part of 
the feudal castle : in part of the palace, in part of the cot- 
tage : as a group of buildings rather than as one, and even 
as a City of God rather merely than His Temple : and all 
combined into a whole by no genius of a superior human 
Architect, and on no principles scientifically consistent, but 
rather by that indefinite Spirit presiding over and per- 
vading equally a Nation's and a Church's life, for which 
I know no truer name than the Providence of God. 
Most assuredly our National Church has grown to be what 
it is, not by any preconceived and theoretically consistent 
plan, but by a series and combination of political and social 
events which it did not originate and could not prevent, 
but was permitted in a great measure to control. And not 
even only this : but it has also received benefits and com- 
mitted errors which must now largely modify the claims and 
affect the character which it might have had if it had been 
erected on any independent base, or constructed on any 



THOMAS CRANMER. 



241 



theoretic principles. The true temper, therefore, of the 
English Churchman must be ever one of Thankfulness and 
of Humility, of Gentleness and of Charity. For he cannot 
but remember that his Church owes not only the largest 
portion of its Edifices and its Endowments, but also that 
great scheme of National Parochial Subdivision which is the 
prominent glory of its present position, to the piety and the 
wisdom of that Church from which it separated : and that it 
owes a large amount of that Nonconformity and Dissent 
which is our misery and our shame, to a want of piety and 
wisdom which is peculiarly its own. He will know and feel 
that from the circumstances of its history — a history ante- 
dating that of every other Institution of our nation, and all 
throughout intimately mixed up with that of our civil life — 
it has come to abound in all kinds of theoretic anomalies, 
and to embody in it manifold observances which are wide 
deviations from primitive practice; and therefore he will 
never think of attaching to it the character of a normal 
institution, but view it always as a special adaptation of the 
Christian spirit and the Church life to the varying needs of 
a great and a growing people. He will not therefore attempt 
to force upon all equally a yoke which he may find it easy to 
wear, only because a complicated richly-coloured covering is 
that which the accumulated civilization of centuries has 
accustomed him to in other departments of his life. Under- 
standing like Cranmer, the founder and first builder of our 
Reformed Ecclesiastical Edifice, how there has been no 
Divine Pattern of a Church left us in the Gospel, and there- 
fore how on Protestant principles there can be none univer- 
sally obligatory, he will ground the claims of our Church 
upon its spiritual worth rather than upon its traditional 
authority. He will set forth ever as its most prominent and 
most sacred claims — its faithful tradition of the pure Gospel 
in its authorised formularies — its opening for all and for ever 



242 THOMAS CRANMER. 

the sources of all Christian Revelation to the English nation 
by its Translation and Proclamation of the Bible in a lan- 
guage that may be understood by the commonest of the 
people — upon its reasonable and reverend forms of wor- 
ship — upon its immense social and civilising benefits — 
these things and the like, I say, he will ever dwell on more 
than on its superior observance of Scriptural precedents, or its 
exclusive possession of Spiritual prerogatives. Indeed every 
true English Churchman, I think, must ever remember and 
revere so much the example which his own Church has 
given of resistance to all exclusive claims of ecclesiastical 
authority, and to all attempts to monopolise the Spirit of 
Christ, or to Romanise, or in any other way to Sectarianise, 
the Catholic Church — that he will rejoice at every new 
Reformation that is an advance towards a truer Liberty, 
and bless God for every growth in grace in others that is 
greater than his own. Cultivating this temper of mind, and 
continually striving after a Reformation in our own indi- 
vidual hearts, I believe that we shall best promote the 
welfare of that portion of the Church of Christ to which we 
have the blessed privilege of belonging, and shall do most to 
bring about that consummation so devoutly to be wished — 
the accomplishment of the Saviour's Prayer — " That they all 
may be One — as Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee — 
that they also may be One in Us — that the world may 
believe that Thou hast sent Me." Amen. 



OLIVEE CEOMWELL. 



Civil and Religions Liberty are most intimately connected 
with each other : and if that Reformation in our country in 
the Sixteenth century of which 1 last month spoke to you be 
of the first importance to us, those two Revolutions which took 
place in the century that followed — with the former of which 
I would this evening engage your attention — can be justly 
regarded as only in a very small degree inferior to it. In- 
deed it seems to me that these three great events in our 
national history must be judged of together if we would 
understand the true significance of each, and appreciate the 
full measure of our country's Protestantism. 

But there is so much to be said on this matter this even- 
ing in our meditation on the story of Oliver Cromwell, that 
I must make to you only a very few introductory remarks. 
Indeed the difficulty of speaking to you about Cromwell pro- 
ceeds very principally from the great abundance and com- 
plexity of the materials of his history. Perhaps there never 
was any portion of any country's history concerning which 
such a quantity of written matter has been issued : matter 
of the most diverse qualities : truly a mass : miscellaneous, 
heterogeneous : dense and dull, heavy and heaped up : 



244 OLIVER CROMWELL. 

wearisome to move, burdensome to carry : intolerable in 
many respects in any way to deal with. But at the same 
time I must say that some very serious study of this period 
of our history is absolutely essential for every Englishman, 
or indeed for any other man, who would aspire to be in any 
sense Educated. And I think that a man can hardly put 
his powers to a better test than in trying to form for himself 
some credible history of this time : I know scarcely anywhere 
of such hard historical work to be done — such pressing de- 
mand upon a man's natural insight and judicial faculties : 
such strong stern trial of his moral courage — such a thorough 
searching of his religious sympathies. A man is here brought 
into close contact — inevitable confronting — with the very 
deepest facts of religious and social life ; and how he feels 
and comports himself in their presence, will assuredly give 
him to understand what manner of man he is — where his 
deepest sympathies lie — whither his real tendencies are 
leading him. And truly diverse have been the judgments 
which have been given already ; the majority, however, it 
may be said, to whatever extent differing as to the goodness 
of the cause, nearly all concurring as to the badness of the 
character of its great agent, Cromwell. Him they almost 
unanimously agree to pronounce an insincere man — a self- 
seeker : most able but most artful : most religious in speech, 
most worldly at heart; having the form of godliness, but 
not its power : or if at first when obscure, sincere, then a 
Fanatic : and ever afterwards when successful, Hypocritical. 
I need not say that if I thought Cromwell this, or anything 
like this, he should have no voice of mine, here or else- 
where : but I think otherwise of him, and have always 
thought otherwise of him. My first attempt to estimate any 
historical character — many years ago now — was engaged 
with that of Oliver Cromwell : and from that time to this I 
have kept my mind open to all the light which has reached 



OLIVER CROMWELL. 245 

me, and I am now of the same opinion as I was then, namely 
of this opinion, that Oliver Cromwell is one of the very- 
greatest of Great Englishmen. 

Understand, however, distinctly from the first that I do 
not hold up Cromwell to you as one in all things to be 
praised : very far from this indeed : No, with a very deep 
sense that he has been miserably misjudged by most, and 
that he has scarcely ever been duly appreciated by any, I do 
by no means consider him either an unblaraeable man, or an 
unexceptionable Christian. He was rather, I conceive, a 
Great Man with great faults : an immature Christian, but a 
fervently sincere one : a kind of man and of Christian I 
think by no means a fit product for us in this Nineteenth 
century of grace; but still one very marvellously greater 
than any other which our England commonly produced two 
centuries ago. Indeed if you have remembered what I have 
said to you on former occasions with regard to what I con- 
sider the noblest kind of Christian product, I think you will 
see that I must have peculiar difficulty in speaking of Crom- 
well. He is a man so very far removed in many points from 
that tone and temper of the Christian character with which 
I have most sympathy, that I feel it a considerable effort to 
stand forth as a defender of him : but at the same time I feel 
so deeply the injustice which has been done to his character, 
generation after generation, and the substantial inner worth 
and nobleness of his soul amid all its outer crusts of earthi- 
ness, that it would be unpardonable in me, who have under- 
taken to uphold to you some of the Great Men of the world, 
to shrink from vindicating for Cromwell what I believe to 
be his due — even a position amidst the very Foremost Spirits 
of our race. 

And now, though I clearly foresee that I have more to say 
to you than you may like to listen to, yet I must, before 
entering upon the actual story of Cromwell, beg you to bear 



246 OLIVER CROMWELL. 

in mind two or three considerations which I cannot but think 
necessary to be carefully weighed by every one who would 
form a just judgment of this great matter. Consider then, 
first, how the case has been with Cromwell's story for the 
most part hitherto : it has been told us chiefly by his ene- 
mies : by men who have either hated him or his cause, or 
both, most fiercely, or by men of a temper more political than 
religious : by men who have defended despotism and de- 
spised the Gospel. It was first written in the days of the 
Restoration, when men gave themselves up unrestrainedly to 
the indulgence of hate against their predecessors — in the first 
flush of what they then deemed Victory, and before they had 
learned that that victory would have to be undone, and 
those Stuarts whom they had restored would have to be 
again dethroned. This last point I must beg you very par- 
ticularly to bear in mind. Had these Stuarts been retained 
on that throne on which they were reseated, and had they 
made England increasingly happier and better by their 
government — had they justified by realising the expectations 
of their adherents, and been substantially and sincerely pro- 
moters of Religion and Morality, of Justice and Constitutional 
Liberty — then indeed the invectives of their adherents against 
Cromwell might have been listened to with submission, as 
they would have fallen with some considerable force : but 
seeing that these two sons of Charles the First were far 
worse than their father — seeing that under them England 
was debased at home and abroad to a degree unprecedented 
in all her annals — seeing that their conduct was such that in 
the very same generation in which they were restored they 
were again dethroned, and for ever banished from the Eng- 
lish soil — then, I say, this second act of the great English 
Revolution in the Seventeenth Century throws a very im- 
portant light upon the first, and the Revolution of 1688 
which we all consent to call ' Glorious ' must be considered 



OLIVEE CEOMWELL. 247 

as reflecting some of its glory upon that in which Cromwell 
was so great an agent. And really, are the men who made 
the great mistake of considering the House of Stuart as hav- 
ing an inalienable Divine right to rule over Englishmen — 
men who for long years fell prostrate before the most pro- 
fligate of kings, and thought the while that they were doing 
God service — men who deemed the interests of Cheist's 
Church to be more promoted than endangered by the patron- 
age of Charles and of James, and dared to identify His altar 
with their throne — are these the men whom we are to receive 
as authoritative judges of the Religion or Morality of Crom- 
well ? It always seems to me that as the men who de- 
throned James the Second, whom they long had looked upon 
as ruling them by Divine Right, should ever have been 
silent about the rights of Englishmen, so the men who will- 
ingly served in the Court of Charles the Second should ever 
have abstained from accusing others of Hypocrisy or Irre- 
ligion. 

And when we come to later times, who that has spoken 
ill of Cromwell's religious sincerity has been one whom an 
earnest Christian would take for his guide in anything 
else that enters deeply into the Christian Life ? I for my 
part know not one : and therefore I have ever considered the 
character of Cromwell to have been unfairly dealt with, and 
that it was no presumption, but rather the clearest duty, for 
every earnest man carefully to re-examine the verdict of the 
majority before he repeated it as his own. 

But after all, the influence of names and authority can be 
but temporary for any honest seeker after truth in this or in 
any other matter, and by such an one the main objections to 
Cromwell will probably arise from the character of the Cause 
of which he was the Champion. The first thing, then, for 
any one who desires to form a just judgment concerning 
Cromwell, is to make up his mind about this Cause of his — 



248 OLIVER CROMWELL. 

whether it was a noble cause or otherwise. Was it a cause 
in which a true Christian and a true Englishman might he 
earnestly engaged ? Was it a cause, I do not say absolutely 
the Best, but which might reasonably and honestly be con- 
sidered the Better by the kind of men who adopted it for their 
own 1 That the Civil ground of the contest was sufficient 
on the part of the Parliament, I suppose to be now sufficiently 
admitted, because not only, as I have said, was the same 
course repeated and sanctioned by the whole nation subse- 
quently, but because all our constitutional legislation from 
that time to this has been more and more characterised by 
those principles which were involved in the success of these 
Revolutionary struggles. But with the civil part of this 
question I am not going to occupy your attention at all 
largely this evening. The struggle in Cromwell's time was 
something much more than a civil one : and he himself was 
something much more than a successful Soldier and Ruler. 
That struggle was as much for Religious Liberty as for 
Civil : and Cromwell was the Champion of Puritanism as 
well as the Opponent of Despotism. 

Now it is this Puritanism — and the offence which it is — 
which I believe to be at the root of men's aversion to Crom- 
well : and well indeed may men who dislike Puritanism dis- 
like Cromwell, for he was the very highest product and im- 
personation of the spirit of Puritanism, if I understand him 
and it aright : no better specimen to be found anywhere of 
that singular form of Christianity than Cromwell, save indeed 
it be one who is yet better known to you — and I will venture 
to say is loved by those of you to whom he is known as you 
love few other men two centuries old — I mean John Bunyan. 
This man ever presents himself to me as the best type of the 
ordinary Puritan ; and he surely is a man who was a true 
Christian, and one who has been honoured of God to be an 
instrument of converting and edifying very many souls — a 



OLIVER CROMWELL. 249 

man whom we must honour too, if we would aspire to un- 
derstand the mysteries of the kingdom of God on earth or in 
heaven. A few words then on Puritanism, and I will speak 
of Cromwell. 

Puritanism, then, in so far as it was a Theory — though 
perhaps it was always more a Faith than a Creed — was built 
on the assumption that all true Christians constitute a pecu- 
liar people — a people as much chosen of God as the Hebrews 
were — and were intended to live according to a specially 
Revealed Law : that this Law was contained, complete and 
irreversible, within the Written Volume of the Bible: and 
that therefore the calling of the true Christian was to realise 
this law in individual and social life, and, if it might be, also 
in national : in fact, so in all ways to translate the Written 
Word into living action that there might become visible a 
kingdom of Heaven on earth — a species of Theocratic Com- 
monwealth — in which Religion and Law should be identified, 
and in which all authority should be exercised and obeyed as 
unto the Lord and not unto man. This kind of Constitution 
then — social and political — in which Biblical Law should be 
above every Law, a Law at once universal and inflexible — 
required as its necessary complement a strong faith in an 
ever-living, ever-acting Providence over it — an expecta- 
tion in those who lived under it of visible interpositions 
of its Invisible Head precisely the same in character, though 
differing in form, with those which were manifested to the 
Hebrews of old. They lived consciously under an ever-present 
Eye, and looked up to Heaven for its wrath or its favour, 
with quite as unhesitating an expectation of seeing some 
token of either according to their deeds, as one would do in 
the service of an inflexibly just earthly Master, or an indul- 
gently kind earthly Father. To the Puritan as to the 
Hebrew, the Commandments of the Bible all came, as the 
awful Ten did, from out of the thunder and the lightning, 



250 OLIVER CROMWELL. 

and he believed that he must obey them, or perish in his 
disobedience. He believed, in fact, that he had to do with 
an Invisible Omnipotent Being who executed judgment on 
transgressors of His law with an inflexible and infallible 
certainty which nothing but Repentance, and Humiliation, 
and Prayer, could avert : that his life, therefore, here on 
earth was a very awful gift : that he had a Divine Calling 
and a Heavenly Prize which it was c the one thing needful ' 
for him to make sure of: that he had a certain ' soul' which 
might and must be ' saved ' or ' lost, ' according as he 
1 walked with God ' on earth, or did not — according as he 
did or did not renounce the world, the flesh, and the Devil, 
and strive with all his might, God helping him, to be 
Christ's faithful soldier and servant unto his life's end. 
Thus the Puritan believed not merely in a Supreme Mind 
but in a Sovereign "Will : not in the laws of Nature and the 
like, but in the Commandments of the Lord God Almighty : 
in an ever present Person, not in a far-off First Cause : in a 
Particular, as well as in an Universal, Providence : aye, 
Heaven all above, Hell all beneath, and man's life on earth 
a ' Pilgrim's Progress ' — a ' Holy War' — this was the Creed 
of the Puritan. 

And truly there is a soul and a significance in this 
Puritanism, which is everlasting. It is the recognition of 
the reality of Good and Evil, and of the eternal and infinite 
Difference between the Two : it is the belief that men are 
summoned to be the servants and soldiers of the Being who 
is Supremely Good, and to fight with Him and for Him, 
against all Evil until it be destroyed out of this earth : and 
that if men do not thus fight, they are to be considered 
as Deserters, and will assuredly be conquered and cast out 
into that Hell which has been prepared from the beginning 
for the Devil and his servants. Life on earth, a work, a 
war, a grand gift, a noble stewardship— lying ever encom- 



OLIVER CROMWELL. 251 

passed by Splendour and by Darkness infinite; a Law of 
Duty Eternal and Inflexible as the Heavens, which a man 
can transgress only at infinite peril, but may be enabled to 
obey to his infinite gain ; an ever-active Omniscient Provi- 
dence, always present to suggest and to succour, to guide 
and to guard, as well as to govern and to chastise; the 
Invisible in fact ever translucent through the Visible, and 
Spirit around and above ever in communion with Spirit 
within — these were the essential Articles of the Creed of the 
Puritan. And however this may appear to us, for these 
men of old it was a very authentic possession : a staff for 
their souls to lean on in trouble, and a weapon for them to 
fight with in war : bread they could nourish themselves with 
in life, and a Hope they could front Eternity with at any 
time rejoicingly. Men, as it seems to me, of souls much 
larger and deeper in many ways than ours, and of a faith, 
not like ours, argumentative and mental, but wholly self- 
abandoning — men of a noble aim, and of a quite awful 
devoutness : thinking most of the dues of Conscience and of 
the worth of the soul — of the Sacredness of Duty and of the 
Sublimity of Worship — dwelling and working ever as under 
the Eye of the Almighty Father — practically believing in 
The Living God. 

All Puritans were doubtless not such as these : perchance 
but few : and even noble as the aim was of the Few, it was 
one which admitted of easy self-delusions. Alas, a visible 
Theocracy without a sensible Inspiration — this is an assump- 
tion so much ante-dating the Future as to be at least midway 
between Faith and Presumption, if insisted on as yet with any 
strictness of the letter. And I am quite prepared to admit 
that this Puritan Faith did often degenerate into Presumption, 
and that as they have represented themselves, as well as have 
been represented by their enemies, there is a vast quantity of 
their speech and action which may justly excite our aversion 



252 OLIVER CROMWELL. 

rather than our sympathy. Their minds seem often so satu- 
rated with the history of the Old Testament as to have but 
little capacity for imbibing much of the spirit of the New, 
and they so indiscriminately mix up secular things with sacred, 
that they must produce in many minds an impression of 
inconsistency and confusion both singular and forbidding. 
Their strange and obtrusive use of Scriptural phraseology, 
and their incorrect and offensive methods of Scriptural inter- 
pretation, and their unweariable habit of Scriptural exposition 
— may readily and reasonably weary or disquiet us. And 
truly if they had only talked — and talked thus — we might 
then not have thought much of them : but these men that do 
thus, do they not do more ? Ah, verily yes : so much more, 
I think, that he must indeed stand upon a higher eleva- 
tion than their opponents hitherto have done, who can 
pretend altogether to look down upon them without a greater 
presumption than their own. 

But now to Cromwell: and in order to lessen, though 
very hopelessly to remove, the difficulty caused by the com- 
prehensiveness and complexity of Cromwell's story, I will 
endeavour to tell you only an outline of it, and trust to your 
correcting the inaccuracies, and filling in the blank spaces, of 
my story, afterwards at your leisure. 

Oliver Cromwell was born in the last year of the sixteenth 
century — on the 25th of April — at Huntingdon. He was by 
birth a gentleman, living neither in any considerable height, 
nor yet in obscurity. He was of the same family stock 
with that of the Thomas Cromwell whom we met with in 
the histories of More and Cranmer. His father, Robert 
Cromwell, was a younger brother of that Sir Oliver Crom- 
well who so magnificently entertained James on his Progress 
from Scotland to take possession of the throne of England : 
and he himself sat in one Parliament as member for the 
town of Huntingdon: but when Oliver was born he was 



OLIVER CROMWELL. 253 

engaged in business principally. Our Oliver was the fifth 
of his ten children, and educated at the Town Grammar 
School, and then at Sidney Sussex College at Cambridge — 
the date of his admission here being the day of Shakespere's 
death, 23d of April, 1616. But neither here, nor heretofore, 
was he at all of a studious disposition : he has had little culture 
before he comes up to college, and has grown up some- 
what stubborn and self-willed, rude and rough: and now 
he seems little likely to be much better. He has not, 
however, been long here when his father dies, and his 
mother, being now left with a large family and but moderate 
means, is anxious that he should be doing something that 
may be profitable : and so he removes from Cambridge to 
London — to study law. This, however, he does not do : he 
rather wastes his energies and his time in profitless pursuits 
and pleasures : in gambling and in riotous living, it may 
be. 

But he does not stay long here either, for when he is but 
one and twenty he marries a daughter of Sir James Bour- 
chier's, and then returns to live with his mother and sisters 
at Huntingdon — as a farmer and magistrate. And here he 
has nine children born to him : and here, too, and now, he 
himself is spiritually * born again,' as it would seem. For 
losing sight of him awhile, we find a great change has come 
over him. The rough, riotous, animal youth has become a 
grave, serious, and somewhat melancholy man. He is now 
the friend of Persecuted Puritans : he entertains them in his 
house : he listens to their doctrines — he reads his Bible : he 
feels a new spirit coming into him — from no special cause, 
but hearing the Word : a spirit which has warred against the 
flesh, and is conquering now. Cromwell's whole nature is 
stirred to its depths : is fermenting : a fearful process, a joy- 
ful result — but a result visible to all — unquestionable : for 
whereas he was carnal, now he is becoming spiritual; many 



254 OLIVER CROMWELL. 

old things are passing away in him, and many things be- 
coming new. 

And this change in Cromwell's character has made a great 
change in the feelings of his neighbourhood towards him. Of 
old he was not much liked there, and had lost the friendship 
of his worthy old uncle and godfather, Sir Oliver — which he 
now regains ; and has come to be so much thought of by his 
fellow-townsmen, that they elect him their Representative in 
Parliament. And so in 1628 he goes up to London to attend 
in his place in that Parliament which you will recollect 
framed the celebrated Petition of Right, and passed resolu- 
tions against Illegal Tonnage and Poundage — in both of 
which he took part. But his first speech was on a matter 
at this time more characteristic of his state of mind. It was 
on ( The Committee of Religion ' that he first spoke, and here 
against ' the flat Popery ' of some of the Bishops and Clergy. 
A man of no special mark now perhaps, but one whose mind 
is deeply meditating what he sees : a mind learning much 
daily through those two great Teachers of a Great Manhood, 
Observation and Sympathy : a somewhat awful mind to 
have looking on in that time and place. For it could not 
but see the wrong side of things uppermost, and this was 
almost the same thing in such a mind with an instant effort 
to turn these things upside down. Bad men in high places, 
weak men in power ; the righteous suffering — if not in silence, 
yet only under protest : and the unrighteous ruling all reck- 
lessly — much does such a mind brood over these things, and 
whether it might not be, may not be, otherwise. All around 
him say, Impossible: Cromwell says, Almost Impossible. 
But the Parliament is suddenly dissolved, and Cromwell goes 
back again to Huntingdon, pondering these things. He will 
do what he can however, in his private station, to promote 
the preaching of the true Gospel, and to oppose the Religious 
Formalism of the times. And so he engages in promoting 



OLIVER CROMWELL. 255 

a scheme which there is now among the Puritans of estab- 
lishing Lectureships over the country. This is a plan of 
buying certain ' Lay Impropriations ' which give right of 
ecclesiastical presentations : and they vest these in { Feoffees,' 
who put into the cures a peculiar class of clergy, who 
preached at times and places which were supplementary to 
those occupied by the regular incumbents. These, however, 
are soon suppressed by Laud and his Star Chamber — but not 
without having done much good in their short life. 

In 1631 Oliver sells his property in Huntingdon, and stocks 
a large farm at St Ives with the money he gets for it : and 
here lives a thoroughly English country life — a life of robust 
out-of-doors work ; of abundant buying and selling — sub- 
stantial honest dealing ; given to hospitality : of blunt speech 
and great household worth; truthful, kindly, religious. 
But Cromwell, though well to do in the world, and with a 
prospect too of doing better, is not happy : for a concern for 
the public welfare overclouds all private enjoyment. And 
truly his country is not well to do, as he is, with a prospect 
of doing better. No, Public Liberty seems dying daily. 
Continual fresh reports of Tyranny reach him — the religious 
persecutions of Laud — the illegal measures of the Ministers. 
They cut off Prynne's ears, and begin to levy ship-money. 
But Hampden (Cromwell's cousin) will pay no ship-money, 
and in public opinion succeeds in his opposition to it. As 
his cousin has taken up the Civil grievance, shall he take 
up the Religious ? He will think of it. 

In 1635 he removes to Ely, for he has been left some con- 
siderable property there, and he will manage it himself. 
And so for the next three years he is engaged in these 
matters, tranquilly, save that in 1638 he opposes with great 
vigour some Royal encroachments in the matter of draining 
that great Fen country in which he lives. It does not 
appear that he was opposed to the object : but the special 



256 



OLIVER CROMWELL. 



means now to be employed by the Government for effecting 
it, he thought so unjust, that the good object would be 
bought too dearly at the price of submission : and so he put 
himself at the head of a resistance to the scheme, and suc- 
ceeded in preventing it. And here by his fearless mainten- 
ance of what he believed to be Right against Power — a re- 
sistance in those days not to be exercised without great per- 
sonal risk — he clearly ascertains his power, and makes out 
his title to be a Leader of men. And so impressed with this 
seem those about him, that when Charles calls a Parliament 
in 1640, Cromwell is returned for Cambridge. This Parlia- 
ment, you will recollect, is dismissed in three weeks : but 
another is called in the November of the same year ; which 
is destined to sit longer than any Parliament ever sat, and is 
known in history as the Long one : and Cromwell is again 
returned for Cambridge. 

And now follow rapidly those events which are doubtless 
as familiar to you as household history, and which I will not 
weary you by dwelling on : but you must permit me just to 
enumerate them in order that I may speak of some of them 
more presently. The King then, having failed in his at- 
tempts to overawe this Parliament (to which I have said 
Cromwell was returned) and forcibly to seize five of its mem- 
bers, retires from London and endeavours to raise an army 
in opposition to the Parliament, and sets up his standard at 
Nottingham in August, 1641. The Parliament raises an 
army for its defence, in which Cromwell rises from being 
captain of a troop to be Captain General. The first engage- 
ment between the Royal and Parliamentary forces is at Edge 
Hill (on the edge of Warwickshire) : and Cromwell is here 
with Hampden. It is but an inconsiderable affair : but it 
suggests to a great mind a great thought — to Cromwell this : 
That a good cause will never prosper with bad soldiers : that 
to cope with men of Honour they must have men of Religion: 



OLIVER CROMWELL. 257 

that men having the fear of God before them are the only- 
men who will have the fear of wrong : and that men who 
' make some conscience of what they do ' are the only men 
who can justly fight for Civil and Religious Liberty. 
His cousin Hampden says to this, It is a good notion if it 
could be executed. Cromwell thinks that any notion that is 
good may be executed — ought to be — must be. 

And so he instantly, but amidst explosive derision, sets 
about executing this, and gradually succeeds. He will from 
this day henceforth allow no new man to serve under him 
whom he believes to be a mere hireling — no man who is not 
what he calls ' a man of principle.' And so his men — ' those 
psalm-singing fellows ' — in time get the name of Ironsides, 
and wherever he and they appear they conquer : they never 
were once beaten in all their battles. Truly from the very 
outset of Cromwell's career, wherever he is there is success, 
and wherever he is not there is defeat. He is successful at 
Croyland, at Stamford, at Gainsborough, and at Winceby 
Fight (October 11, 1643), where he is sole captain: and 
when third in command, he it is that turns the tide to victory 
at Marston Moor (July 2,1644). But at the second battle 
of Newbury, where he is now ordered to join Lord Essex, he 
is absolutely not allowed to conquer — being kept back by his 
General. How is this ? Why clearly Lord Essex does not 
wish to beat the King — so Cromwell sees : and if this be the 
case, Cromwell judges that the war is not honest, and there- 
fore not just, or justifiable. He feels and declares that War 
is not lawful at all unless it be so carried on that a man can 
earnestly long for Victory — praying to God for it with all his 
soul, and thanking Him humbly and heartily when it is 
vouchsafed : that War never must be a Game, but always is 
either a Duty or a Sin ; it must be 'made Conscience of — 
all else is hypocritical. If he, therefore, is to have anything 
more to do with it, things must be put on a new footing. 

R 



258 OLIVER CROMWELL. 

So Cromwell and his friends contrive ' The New Model ' for 
the Army, and ' The Self-denying Ordinance ' for the Com- 
manders : and these measures having to be passed through 
a Parliament the majority of whom are Presbyterians, and at 
variance with his party (the Independents), if they are adopted 
it must be from a perception of their necessity or of their 
wisdom, his adversaries being the judges. They pass ; and 
Sir Thomas Fairfax, a Presbyterian, is appointed General, 
and Cromwell is disqualified from serving further. But soon 
Fairfax, getting into trouble, begs Parliament to dispense for a 
while with the Ordinance in Cromwell's case, and to send 
him down to his assistance. Parliament does so, and two 
days afterwards follows the great victory of Naseby, very 
principally through the courage and capacity of Cromwell. 
Then follow the siege of Bristol and the surrender of Prince 
Rupert, the affair at Basing House, and the King's flight 
from Oxford (which has been long his head quarters) to the 
Scots' army at Newark — which may be considered as the 
closing of the First Act of this great War in the summer of 
1646. 

How the Scotch army surrender the King to the Parlia- 
ment, and how Cornet Joyce transfers the King from the 
custody of the Parliament to that of the Army, and how there 
are manifold dissensions between the Parliament and the 
Army, and equally manifold negotiations between the Army 
and the King — how the King is confined at Hampton Court, 
and is allowed to escape from it, and yet knows nothing 
better to do with himself than to surrender himself again in 
the Isle of Wight — and how there are Royalist risings in 
Wales, and a mutiny of a part of the Fleet — and the Second 
Act of the War begins, by the entrance into England of an 
army of 40,000 Scots under the Duke of Hamilton, in August 
1648. Cromwell is sent for out of Wales to fight the Scotch : 
he comes with swiftness, and with force, and disperses the 



OLIVER CROMWELL. 259 

Scotch multitude at Preston utterly — taking their chief and 
many thousands of prisoners, with scarcely any loss at all 
to himself. He goes on to Scotland, and thoroughly com- 
pletes his work : but before he has done it there have been 
carried on fresh negotiations with the King, which result in 
nothing but a thorough conviction on the part of the negotia- 
tors of such insincerity on the part of the King as must ren- 
der it useless ever to attempt any further treaties. The 
House of Commons indeed, by a majority of 46, are willing 
to take further measures of negotiation, but Colonel Pride 
1 purges ' the House of 41 members, and so the majority be- 
comes a minority: and now active measures are taken 
against the King. A High Court of Justice for trying and 
judging of Charles Stuart, King of England, is constituted — 
of 135 members : Oliver Cromwell is one of these, and at- 
tends every session of this Court but one, and on the 29th of 
January, 1649, is the third of Fifty-six to sign a warrant 
for his death. 

On the death of the King, a Council of State is formed to 
settle the nation : of this Cromwell is a member, but Brad- 
shaw is President. The kingdom is now provisionally con- 
stituted a 'Commonwealth,' but the old laws and customs 
are administered in the accustomed manner, and very nearly 
by the same persons as before. There is very little consti- 
tutional or social Revolution — no bloodshed, or cruelty, of 
any kind. 

But Cromwell acts now for four years to come rather as a 
military servant of the Parliament than as one of its Poli- 
tical Leaders. He is almost instantly appointed by them 
to reduce Ireland to order. You will remember that there 
was a rebellion there in 1641 — a kind of Irish St. Bartholo- 
mew — in which it is said forty thousand persons were mas- 
sacred, principally Protestants — and it has never got to 
peace again since. For nine years a most insane war has 



260 OLIVER CROMWELL. 

been raging : Cromwell, by merciful severity, concludes it in 
nine months. 

After that time Cromwell returns to England, being most 
imperatively needed to settle Scotland now. He is consti- 
tuted Captain General of the forces of the Commonwealth 
(Fairfax declining), and instantly marches* with great swift- 
ness for the north. This campaign of his in Scotland is as 
remarkable too as that of his in Ireland, in revealing to us 
the true character of Cromwell. In the one case, he be- 
lieved he had to fight against the enemies both of the Lord 
and of the Commonwealth : and he wars like a Hebrew : in 
the other, he believes he has to fight against all as the enemies 
of the Commonwealth indeed, but also against many who 
are the friends of God, and he wars like a Christian — if that 
be possible. He is indeed no less brave and bold — no less 
resolute and vigorous : but he is ever gentle in his strength, 
pitiful in his wrath : treating his enemies as misled brethren 
merely : anxious to hurt them no more than is necessary for 
their own good, and earnestly beseeching them to make 
peace with him. He argues, he exhorts : he teaches and he 
preaches : but he cannot persuade : se under protest he 
fights : and if ever there was an answer from Heaven to 
an appeal to Christian arms, it was given at Dunbar, on the 
3d of September, 1651. For it is made under ail seeming 
disadvantage by Cromwell, and yet of the Scotch force Three 
Thousand are slain, and Ten Thousand are taken prisoners : 
and of Cromwell's army, not half so numerous as the Scotch, 
there is not a loss of Thirty men. The remainder of the 
Scotch forces, with Charles, intrench themselves in Stirling 
Castle — but leave this suddenly, and march into England. 
They are at Carlisle on the 6th of August, 1651, and at 
Yforcester on the 3d of September, where Cromwell falls in 
with them, and on that anniversary of the battle of Dunbai, 
w r ins the battle of Worcester, which, in his despatch written 



OLIVER CROMWELL. 261 

that day, he appropriately terms ' the Crowning Mercy ' of 
his life. 

He now enters upon other battles demanding of him 
scarcely less of courage and of skill. The Settlement 
of the kingdom yet remains to be accomplished: but there 
would seem now a clearer stage for doing this upon than 
any yet obtained. And Cromwell presses this upon the Par- 
liament, or rather that Remainder of it — some 120 — which 
yet is to be found in council. This Remnant is clearly in- 
competent in many ways — naturally feeble, and apparently 
not in earnest about what it has to do : it keeps asking for 
time, and resolves that it will dissolve itself — when do you 
think ? three years hence. The Army are urgent that it do 
some work — itself having done much of late years, and that 
rapidly too — from Naseby to Worcester. The Army petition 
the Lord General that the Parliament may be expedited in 
settling the nation, and may give some guarantee that it will 
settle it according to the Gospel — that it will permanently 
secure the fruits of its victories. The Parliament do little 
notwithstanding, and what they are doing, the Army do not 
like. There are ten or twelve conferences between the Re- 
presentatives of the Army and the Parliament ; but nothing 
is furthered hereby, and the Parliament has dwindled down 
to fifty-three. So, that the Divine Mercies vouchsafed of 
late may not be all wasted by such an incapable formality as 
this Parliamentary Remnant, Oliver Cromwell goes down to 
the House on the 20th of April, 1653, and expels and disperses 
it. And then, taking counsel with the high officers, both 
civil and military, he issues a hundred and forty-four sum- 
monses to various persons in all parts of the kingdom to 
assemble and deliberate concerning the settlement of the 
nation. The method in which these were chosen is very 
illustrative of Cromwell's character, and very honourable to 
it, as it seems to me; it was an honest attempt to get the 



262 OLIVER CROMWELL. 

country ruled by those whom he thought the most religious 
persons in it. It was this : the Independent ministers were 
ordered to take the sense of their Churches, and according to 
this to name a certain number of persons within their dis- 
tricts whom they thought the most godly and able, and from 
these exclusively Cromwell and his Privy Council would 
select 144. When selected, only two of these did not come. 
And nearly all the judges and various officers in all depart- 
ments of the public service continue to act as heretofore, and 
marks of approbation of his conduct are poured in upon him 
from all quarters. Cromwell declares that in this case he 
did not summon one person 'in whom I had not this good 
hope, That there was in him faith in Jesus Christ, and love 
to all His people,' and says, ' If I were to choose any servant, 
the meanest officer for the Army or the Commonwealth, I 
would choose a godly man that hath principles — because I 
know where to have a man that hath principles : and I 
would all our magistrates were thus chosen — and this may 
be done.' 

This Assembly sits for five months and does routine 
business to general satisfaction. They elect a new Council 
of State : take various measures for ejecting ungodly clergy, 
for simplifying and codifying the law, and especially for 
reforming the Court of Chancery : but find the difficulties of 
their position so great that they finally resign their trust to 
Cromwell, who on the 3d of December by an ' Instrument of 
Government ' is constituted ' Lord Protector of the Common- 
wealth of England, Scotland, and Ireland/ with a Council. 
And this same 'Instrument', too, provides a system of Repre- 
sentation for the People — making a new Parliament of four 
hundred and sixty members. It also provided that no laws 
were to be made, nor taxes to be imposed, without the con- 
sent of Parliament, and every act passed by Parliament was 
to become a Law after twenty days, whether it received 



OLIVER CROMWELL. 263 

the consent of the Protector or not. The Parliament also 
was not to be prorogued, adjourned, or dissolved, without its 
own consent, within the first five months of its meeting: 
and a new Parliament was always to be called within three 
years after the dissolution of the last. The appointment, 
too, of all State officers was made subject to the approbation 
of Parliament. Surely this was a wise and just, a free and 
fair base on which to build a Protectorate. 

And Cromwell is now solemnly inaugurated into the new 
office of Protector — all the great officers of the kingdom 
assisting. He calls a Council of Fifteen — and these are of 
the most worthy men that are to be met with in England. 
With their sanction he makes many ' ordinances' — one espe- 
cially for settling the ' Ministry' of the country on a Gospel 
foundation. For this purpose in March a Commission of 
Thirty-eight is appointed for the ' Trial' of public preachers. 
Nine of these are laymen, and all seem to have been chosen 
— not from one sect but from several, and some even from 
among his personal opponents — only on the ground that, as 
it appeared to him, they were men who had given proofs 
that they had ' the root of the matter' in them. And in 
August another body of Commissioners is appointed : from 
fifteen to twenty in each county, to inquire into ' scandalous, 
ignorant, and insufficient Incumbents.' We have the testi- 
mony of Richard Baxter that with all its difficulties this 
worked well, and that ' many thousands of souls blessed God 
for the faithful ministers they let in.' 

And now France and Spain send Embassies to England, 
recognising abundantly the position of Cromwell : and Trea- 
ties are concluded with Holland, Denmark, Sweden, and 
Portugal, which recognise also his power. 

And on the 3d of September, 1654, assembles Cromwell's 
first Parliament, according to the 'Instrument of Govern- 
ment.' Cromwell addresses them in a speech full of light 



264 OLIVER CROMWELL. 

and warmth : and for a moment they seem enkindled to a 
recognition of their high calling: but the first week they 
only debate day after day on the constitutional merits of the 
1 Instrument of Government.' Cromwell comes clown to the 
House and addresses them. He tells them that the Instru- 
ment of Government has been approved and accepted by the 
chief officers of the State and of the Army — by the chief 
Corporations, and the great majority of Magistrates — and by 
those who returned them to this Parliament : and that thus its 
authority cannot admit of their debating it — they must 
assume that, and build upon it. He then requires them to 
sign a Paper which pledges them not to interfere with the 
fundamental provisions of that l Instrument,' by virtue of 
which alone they had assembled. Most of them sign this : 
but they do not leave off their idle discussions, and get no 
work done: they pass no single Bill — no one Resolution: 
they vote no supplies, even though the Army is thirty weeks 
in arrears with their pay : and all kinds of insurrections have 
been put down, and plots detected and prevented, without 
help from them. In fact they do nothing but talk : they do 
nothing towards the government of the nation, and, in place 
of l settling,' only unsettle it. And so when the Five Months 
which the 'Instrument' had provided should be its shortest 
session are over, Cromwell, punctual to the day, dissolves it. 
The whole responsibility of the Government lies upon 
Cromwell and his Council. He now divides the country 
into districts, and places a Major General over each, who is 
to be responsible for the order of the Counties committed to 
him ; to see that justice be administered without hindrance 
or favour by the regular authorities in ordinary cases ; and 
to deal with all kinds of plots and insubordinate people — 
Royalists, Levellers, and Anabaptists — with appeal only to 
himself and the Council. This was a mere temporary pro- 
vision for keeping the peace until some more permanent 



OLIVER CROMWELL. 265 

government could be settled : and, though it was arbitrary, 
it proved beneficial and not unpopular. 

The comparative order which this produced gave the Pro- 
tector leisure to attend to his Foreign Policy, which indeed 
hitherto he had by no means neglected, but which now 
pressed upon him greatly. For some years now we had been 
at war with the Dutch and the Spanish, and Puritan sailors 
under Puritan Admirals had achieved as noble deeds on the 
seas as those we have been engaged with on land. Admiral 
Blake had been victor over Van Tromp and De Ruyter, and 
acquired and vindicated for England the character of the 
Mistress of the Seas. And now in 1655 he fits out two 
armaments under Blake and Montague — against the Spanish 
West Indies — which, I may add here, fail in their main ob- 
ject, though they gain Jamaica : and this is the only failure 
in Cromwell's history — and that not his. 

And what seems to me a noble instance of his mode of 
dealing with Foreign Powers occurs now, and I would have 
you well consider it, if you think that Cromwell cares mostly 
for himself. On the 3d of June this year (1655) he has ap- 
pointed to sign one of the most important of his Treaties with 
France. On that day news comes to him from Piedmont of 
the oppression of the Protestants there by the Duke of Savoy. 
Cromwell refuses to sign the Treaty not only until France 
promises to help him in righting these people — the Lord's 
people,' as he calls them — but until France actually has 
helped him. And how deeply he feels this suffering of a 
distant member of the great Christian body, he further testi- 
fies by directing Milton to write letters to all Protestant 
States concerning it — by appointing a day of Humiliation 
and a General Collection throughout England for them — and 
by subscribing Four Thousand Pounds out of his private 
purse. On the supposition that Cromwell was a man deeply 
devoted to that Great Cause which is not limited to any 



266 



OLIVER CROMWELL. 



nation — the Cause of Christ's Gospel — that he felt its worth 
to a degree which makes most men's feeling of it seem but 
superficial — how intelligible such conduct: how unintelli- 
gible on any other. 

And let such, too, study well the record of that speech of 
his with which he now opens the new Parliament which 
assembles on the 17th of this September, 1656. This seems 
to me the most memorable of all speeches ever spoken on 
such occasions. Most earnestly does he plead for the Per- 
fect Toleration of all who hold the Christian faith under 
any form, if only they will be tolerant of others who do 
the like. But at the same time that he is thus pleading for 
general Toleration, and for freedom of thought and speech, 
he prevents a hundred members out of this new Parlia- 
ment of Four Hundred from taking their seats without first 
submitting to certain conditions. A most singular-looking 
proceeding truly, but one not inconsistent with his aims, and 
not (it is said) even with the letter of the New Instrument 
of Government ; for these whom he prevents from sitting 
now, have manifested such determined and open opposition 
to that Toleration which he is determined to secure as the 
base of all Future Legislation, that, if they be admitted, this 
Parliament can only end as the preceding ones. 

The Three Hundred, however, who do sit are no mere 
Instruments of his. They do away at once with the system 
of Major Generals, for instance. But though not this, they 
are not a very competent body to rule over this kingdom at 
this time : as illustrative of which we may take the fact, 
that with all the exigencies of an l unsettled ' nation pressing 
upon them on every side, they take up three months of pre- 
cious time very principally with debates about one James 
Nayler, and his doctrines and his doings. However, by the 
last day of March, 1657, they have framed a ' Petition and 
Advice' to Oliver Cromwell, and a 'New Instrument of 



OLIVER CROMWELL. 267 

Government' — which provide for his assuming the Title of 
King, and for his nominating his Successor. This they 
many times press upon him, and he as often begs for delay 
in deciding. There are repeated Conferences between him 
and the House of Commons — until the 8th of May, when he 
finally declines to be made a King. And so to confirm his 
present position, he is again inaugurated as Protector, with 
great pomp and rejoicing. 

This same ' New Instrument ' however provides additional 
limitations of the Supreme Power : and also for a House of 
Lords : and Cromwell tries to create one, subject to certain 
conditions of approval by Parliament. He summonses 53 
persons to be Peers : of these Forty only came to sit, when 
Parliament meets again after an adjournment of six months. 
These he addresses with the Commons, on the opening of 
the second session of this Parliament, and again recalls them 
all to a consideration of the ' Providences ' which had 
brought about the present position of things, and with great 
earnestness endeavours to animate them with a sense of their 
high calling. He declares that the whole history of the 
struggle which has ended in the present condition of things 
has been an ordering of Providence: and that his whole 
history has : that assuredly he never contemplated standing 
in the place he is in : that he had not sought his position 
but was ' led ' to it step by step, by a Hand visible enough 
to an eye of faith, and in a way which was c marvellous ' in 
his eyes. And much more does he say that is most im- 
pressive to any open mind, I think : but apparently not very 
impressive to those to whom it was then spoken : for no 
sooner do they leave his presence than they debate most 
eagerly on mere constitutional formalities, and all manner of 
comparative minutiae. Their weakness he deems so great 
an encouragement to insurrections and disorders — of Royal- 
ists and Levellers — that he dissolves them in ten days : and 



268 



OLIVER CROMWELL. 



takes upon himself the whole responsibility of the Govern- 
ment of the country. And now, unfettered by a Parliament, 
he quenches all inflammatory outbreaks, and treads them 
out utterly and speedily. And so he governs some few 
months more, with firm and vigorous hand, and gets his will 
done at home and abroad with an unreluctant obedience, such 
as had not been in the times of his two Royal predecessors. 
But only for a few months more. 

And now before we bid him farewell, let us look at him in 
his Household and on his Deathbed, and see what manner of 
man he shews himself there : for truly these are places where 
it is hardest of all for a man so to feign goodness as to de- 
ceive both others and himself. Now Cromwell from his 
conversion to his death had a happy Home : this is saying- 
much for any man — very much for any public man. He 
loved his mother, and wife and children, with a quite touch- 
ing affection : and they loved him with an affection more 
solemn indeed but not less tender. We have many letters 
of his to his family scattered over the whole course of his 
public life — some written in its most exciting moments, 
amidst the very gravest deeds of civil policy, and even amidst 
the shouts of the battle field — and they all unanimously and 
unequivocally testify of that profound sympathy with their 
spiritual interests, as well as their temporal, which is charac- 
teristic of the Christian, and by that peculiar considerateness 
and courtesy in trifles which is characteristic of the Gentle- 
man. For truly you must recollect that this stern, rugged 
Cromwell was no upstart adventurer who had pushed him- 
self by vulgar self-assertion into places too high for him 
naturally : nothing of the kind ; he was by birth a Gentle- 
man : his grandfather and his uncle had entertained their 
sovereigns sumptuously, and if Cromwell himself was not so 
' golden ' a knight as they, it was because they had lived 
more sumptuously than most men of their time. Yes, Crom- 



OLIVER CROMWELL. 269 

well ; though a Puritan,was a Gentleman : and had always lived, 
if simply, hospitably. It is true he was, compared with our 
present standard of manners, and with that of the courtiers 
of his time, rough and coarse at times : but he was not so in 
any remarkable degree compared with those of his own class 
in his own time. But even here in this matter we have the 
testimony of his enemies (courtiers too) that though when 
he first entered upon public life he was very unlike them- 
selves, yet, when in the later years of his life he had grown 
into something more than they were, he had a dignity of 
deportment, and a self-authenticating aspect of greatness, 
which well befitted the first man in the British nation. But 
neither in his earlier or in his later estate, was he ever other 
than an unaffected, kindly-hearted but sternly moral man : 
in public — authoritative, decisive, unhesitating ; but of most 
profoundly tender nature at home, full of household charities, 
loving and beloved. And men — women — do not love the 
' hypocritical,' I think, and they only fear the ' crafty and 
ambitious.' All his family — the youngest, the mirthful and 
graceful Frances — and the wise Mary, who though so like 
him was yet so handsome — and the dull but virtuous Richard 
— and the clever but giddy Henry — and his daughter Clay- 
pole, who though married could not part from him — and his 
daughter Fleetwood, Ireton's widow, who felt herself only 
more and more humbled by her husband's growing greatness 
— and his wife, with her comely matronly mien, who did not 
like the splendour of Whitehall — and his mother, upwards of 
ninety, whose only earthly wishes were to see her son daily 
while she lived, and to be buried in a quiet churchyard when 
she died — all these for long lived together in singular har- 
mony and affection — as noble a household as any in this our 
land of noble households — and all joined in looking upon the 
great Titanic Cromwell with an enthusiasm of admiring love. 
In prosperity and in his rising fortunes, all was thus with them 



270 OLIVER CROMWELL. 

all — piety and affection, Christian grace and household virtue. 
How was it in affliction and at the last ? Why, now in this 
year 1658, his daughter Fanny has been only four months 
married to poor young Rich, the son of the Earl of Warwick 
— and he dies : and she comes home to her father, who writes 
to Lord Warwick letters of condolence and comfort, it would 
seem, for the brave old Earl replies, ' I cannot enough confess 
my obligation, much less discharge it, for your seasonable 
and sympathising letters; which besides the value they 
derive from so worthy a hand, express such faithful affec- 
tions and administer such Christian advices, as render them 
beyond measure dear to me.' A man thought much of, you 
see, by those nearest to him : much loved, and loving much, 
I think, for now in this same year his daughter Claypole, 
who has been ill some time, in the autumn is again very ill. 
The only thing, she thinks, that can do her any good, is the 
presence of her dear father, his kindly nursing care. She 
has it : for there he sits, and will sit night and day till she 
dies, at his daughter's bedside, that old warrior-statesman : 
he whose heart beat ever calmest amidst the dangers of the 
battle-field, and whose unarmed presence alone could often 
make crowds of enemies to tremble, now gathers himself into 
a very type of gentleness, and becomes a minister the most 
tender to the least want or wish of his dying daughter. He 
will see no one, hear from no one : for fourteen days and 
nights so he sits there ; hourly his heart growing sicker as 
his hope grows fainter : until he has the certainty fully 
formed within him that instead of that treasury of sweet 
affections which he had deemed safely garnered for the solace 
of his deathbed, there will be nothing left him now but the 
light and shadow of their memory. Watching beside her 
thus, long and sleeplessly, and tending her during those 
frequent and violent convulsion fits which brought her to 
her end, he too becomes ill — he too has fits : and when he 



OLIVER CROMWELL. 271 

recovers a little, she is no longer there. Though smitten 
thus, and sorely bruised in spirit, he seems at first not quite 
broken : nay, he seems even getting better : and after a week 
or two goes into the air for an hour or so, and seems refreshed. 
But really he is no better, but worse, and soon (on the 24th 
of August) is confined to his room. He thinks, however, 
that he is not going to die — he feels so much strength within 
him yet : he even says to his physician, 1 1 believe I shall 
yet be spared to do more work, in answer to the prayers of 
those who have a more intimate interest with God than I 
have.' He is removed from Hampton Court to Whitehall, 
for change of air. His fits, however, are doubly frequent 
now : and believing that he may not survive as he had 
expected, in calm intervals he will now do the business of 
the State. He is in a fast consuming ague-fever : but the 
heart is stout within the shivering body, and he declares, ' a 
Governor ought to die Working.' On the 2d of September 
he asks one of his chaplains to read Philippians iv. 11, 12, 
13. ' Not that I speak in respect of want, for I have learned 
in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content. I know 
both how to be abased, and how to abound: everywhere 
and in all things, I am instructed; both to be full and to be 
hungry, both to abound and to suffer need : I can do all 
things through Christ who strengtheneth me.' When the 
passage has been read, he murmurs forth in his broken, 
impulsive way : ' This Scripture did once save my life when 
my eldest son died — which went as a dagger to my heart, 
indeed it did : ' then repeating the words of the Apostle, he 
continues, ' 'Tis true, Paul, you learned this — you attained to 
this measure of grace — but what shall such an one as I do? 
Ah, poor creature as I am, it is a hard lesson for me to take 
out : I find it so : But then those words, " I can do all 
things through Christ that strengtheneth me" — He that 
was Paul's Christ is my Christ too.' As they stand around, 



27^ OLIVER CROMWELL. 

leaning over his bed, he lifts himself up, all aguish as he is, 
and says to one of his chaplains, ' Tell me, is it possible to 
fall utterly from grace ? ' His Chaplain says, ' I think it not 
possible.' Cromwell says, l I know I was in grace once.' 
'The Covenant is sure, and Faith in the Covenant is my 
only support. And if I believe not, He abideth faithful.' 
Turning to his wife and children he says, ' It is not good 
that you should love this world : Live like Christians : I 
leave you the Covenant to feed upon.' And again to all, 
1 All the promises of God are in Christ yea, and in Him, 
Amen ; to the glory of God by us — by us in Jesus Christ, 
you see.' * The Lord hath filled me with as much assurance 
of His pardon and His love, as my soul can hold.' ' I think 
I am the poorest wretch that lives : but I love God, or rather 
I am beloved of God.' 'lama Conqueror indeed, and more 
than a conqueror, through Christ that strengtheneth me.' 
He lays him down again and prays ; the words he uses are 
taken down with carefulness — words seeming earnest — 
seeming truthful — the very interpreters to us of his soul — 
the fittest of all for the exposition and conclusion of his life : 
They were these : — 

1 Lord, though I am a miserable sinner and wretched 
creature I am in covenant with Thee, through Grace : and I 
may — I must — come unto Thee for Thy people. Thou hast 
made me, though so unworthy, an instrument to do them some 
good, and Thee some service : and many of them have set 
too high a value upon me, though others wish for, and 
would be glad of, my death. But, Lord, however Thou dost 
dispose of me, continue and go on to do them good : give 
them consistency of judgment, one heart and mutual love : 
and go on to deliver them : go on with the great work of 
Reformation, and make the name of Christ glorious in the 
world. Teach those who look too much upon Thy instru- 
ments to depend most upon Thyself. Pardon such as desire 



OLIVER CROMWELL. 273 

to trample upon the dust of a poor worm, for they are Thy 
people too : and pardon the folly of this short Prayer : even 
for Jesus Christ, His sake. Amen.' 

With an aspiration for a quiet night, he composes himself 
for sleep ; but it was not God's pleasure that that night 
should be a quiet one, but one the rather most unquiet : for 
within were the death struggles of a spiritual Samson, and 
without the wild blasts of such a storm as seldom there had 
been in England. Most part of the night he is very restless, 
very feverish, speaking often to himself. At one time he is 
heard muttering, ' I would be very willing to live to be fur- 
ther serviceable to God and His people : but perhaps my 
work is done : and assuredly God will always be with His 
chosen.' There is something offered him to drink, that he 
may sleep : he replies to it saying, ' a Governor ought to die 
Waking.' Again they listen and he says, ' Truly God is 
good : indeed He is : He will not ' (his speech is thick and 
failing fast, but they think his expression was) ' He will not 
forsake me.' Thus, and like this, passes the night within 
the chamber of death in the mansion of Whitehall. Solemn 
assemblies had been held for several days throughout the 
country and all over the city in the Churches of the Inde- 
pendents, and large numbers pass this night in fasting and 
tears and prayers, for that great soul's sake which now all 
heedless of this world is gasping itself into another. Though 
he had used some * exceeding self-debasing words, annihilat- 
ing and judging himself,' yet his expressions gradually have 
grown more full of comfort and of peace, until they become 
so much so that a pious spectator says, ' We could not be 
more desirous that he should abide, than he was intent and 
willing to be gone.' And now it is the Third of September 
— the double anniversary of his victories of Dunbar and Wor- 
cester — but he knows not of it — or only just knows — for a 
film has come over his every sense, and a veil between his 



274 OLIVER CROMWELL. 

soul and the world; and now on this his twice victorious 
Third of September his last struggle is over, and his last 
best Victory, we will hope, is for ever won. Awe, and dumb 
grief, paled most faces on that stormy autumn day, and as the 
death news spreads among the praying congregations, louder 
and louder grows the sobbing shout, 'It is the Lord' — but 
1 a great man is fallen in Israel.' 

Such is the story of Oliver Cromwell — at least such out- 
line of it as I am able to present you with on the present 
occasion : an outline indeed inexpressibly insufficient, but 
even in its extreme poverty presenting to us, I think, a man 
whose first aspect is one of Greatness — of greatness so im- 
pressive that it must require much even of this little to 
prove untrustworthy before we should be able to pronounce 
this man not to be among the Greatest. 

You know what manner of man he was in outward pre- 
sence. When he first entered Parliament he is described as 
a man whose ' stature was of a good size — his countenance 
swollen and reddish — his voice sharp and untunable:' and 
as ' very ordinarily apparelled : ' but afterwards we read that 
though l when he appeared first in Parliament he seemed to 
have a person in no degree gracious, no ornament of dis- 
course, none of those talents which used to conciliate the 
affections of the stander-by : yet as he grew into place and 
authority his parts seemed to be raised, as if he had con- 
cealed faculties till he had occasion to use them.' Let us 
look at him at a time between these two extremes — between 
the time when Hampden could say of him ' that sloven 
there,' and Clarendon could say that he looked the Great 
Man successfully. A man, then, we will s.ay, in mid-life, 
presenting himself to us as of strong solid build : of most 
muscular structure, and of somewhat military carriage : with 
profuse brown hair, and a nobly massive head : his face 



OLIVER CROMWELL. 275 

coarse and common, with a wart conspicuous above the right 
eyebrow : a large irregular nose : a mouth and lips expres- 
sive of self-command and of command of others : of I know 
not what kind of eyes : but of a countenance which is on the 
whole eloquent of the man of sagacity, wariness, and promp- 
titude — of that ability and valour, of that sternness and fer- 
vour, of which his true story speaks. Look at any portrait 
of him, and with different degrees of clearness but with 
consentient testimony, you will see, after some meditation, a 
superior Force at least in this man. At first sight perhaps 
little more than a robust English country gentleman, of not 
the highest class; every feature and limb indicating strength; 
a man of not uncommon bulk, but of superabounding animal 
vigour : not unkindly, but clearly not to be trifled with : of 
somewhat keen intellect perchance, but withal of a coarseness 
of the whole nature which leaves you in uncertainty as to 
what the real man might be. But look again at the best 
representation of him that we have, and you will see, I 
think, something more : that forehead may cover thoughts 
of any depth : that nose, though too large for symmetry, is 
not large enough to overshadow the aspect of command 
which beams from every other feature of his face : that 
mouth, chiselled and compressed, has clearly been long exer- 
cised to constrain tumultuous Revolutionary passions from 
within : and the whole countenance — scarred, seamed, 
warted, gnarled — speaks of the great struggles of a great 
soul — a constant fighting of the flesh against the spirit, and 
of the spirit against the flesh — a Civil War within the man, 
in which the insurrectionary instincts of nature have ulti- 
mately been subdued only by the all-conquering Despotism 
of Duty. 

And is not the first aspect of him spiritually, too, that of 
a Great Man? Stout-hearted, valiant, vigorous; fervent in 
spirit, cool in council, strong in the high places of the field : 



276 OLIVER CROMWELL. 

a man throughout intrepid : of unswerving purpose, of un- 
tiring zeal : a man to whom difficulties were but as excite- 
ments, and duties never burdens : a grand Centre of Force : 
a Lord of circumstances : a Tamer of men. No man surely 
ever did more work, in the same time, than this man did — 
and work, too, of so hard a kind — of such hard kinds, for 
truly it was of many kinds — as a Soldier and a Statesman, 
as a Reformer and a Protector. From the first moment that 
we enter upon the public life of Cromwell, we feel as if we 
were in the very thick of life — in the most crushing crowd of 
thoughts and feelings and actions, with which history is at 
any one time conversant : and these not matters of tem- 
porary interest, or of local bye-play, in the world's great 
story, but the rather having to do with the innermost life of 
every man, and of mankind, always : thorough Realities : a 
life so earnest, so full of worth, as to be quite arousing and 
ennobling to the faithful spectator of it even two centuries 
afterwards. Really a period more full of hope and fear, of 
activity and swift vicissitude, than any other I know of : 
requiring a cool and strong head to judge of it — how much 
more — how most of all — to govern it ! And did not Crom- 
well govern it well and wisely too ? Was any man, placed 
in such difficult positions, ever more successful in conducting 
himself in them and out of them ? Did ever any man make 
fewer mistakes — either in judgment or in action? Was he 
not always equal to the occasion, and in the forefront of 
every danger ? Was he not always a doer of what he pro- 
fessed to do, and unsparing of himself in all fighting and in 
all labour? Did he not gather around him, by a kind of 
elective affinity, the ablest and most diversely gifted spirits 
of his age ? 

And anywhere in our history, or in any history, can you 
name to me a man who ever has transacted civil affairs so 
much in a religious spirit — who has made the Unseen 



OLIVER CROMWELL. 277 

Realities so influential on the Temporalities of Government 
— who has so brought Divine Law into constant comparison 
with Human, and attempted to make Human Law so con- 
formable to Divine? The Hebrew People excepted (and 
perhaps in a certain sense the Mahommedan) I say you 
cannot. 

Think well, too, what this man was born to, and what he 
achieved before he died — beginning his grand work after he 
was forty, and ending it before he was sixty — and say 
whether his life was an ignoble one? Surely it was not. 
Remember that the thoughts of this one brain — the courage 
of this one heart — changed the fortunes of a noble party from 
hopelessness to victory : that this obscure and inarticulate 
and hypochondriacal farmer of Huntingdon seated himself on 
the throne of the Stuarts and the Tudors, and ruled there 
with a strength and a wisdom greater than that of those of 
either name — giving an impulse to English Liberty, and 
securing a base for Protestant Toleration, such as has re- 
mained to this day an invaluable, irrevocable possession. 
Ah, think we ever gratefully of this — Liberty of Conscience 
— liberty for men to worship God as they think most 
pleasing to Him — this was first avowedly legalised in 
England under the Protectorate of Oliver Cromwell : and 
that for which the House of Brunswick afterwards obtained 
the throne of this realm, and now holds it, was the main- 
tenance of that great principle which Cromwell was the first, 
if not to introduce, yet bravely to vindicate and fully to 
establish. 

And not only did Cromwell procure for Englishmen this 
Liberty of Worship and of Speech, to an extent wholly un- 
known before him either in this or in any other country of 
Christendom, but he also enlarged the Representation of the 
people : he simplified the processes of law, and secured its 
more impartial administration : he lightened and regulated 



278 OLIVER CROMWELL. 

Taxation : he encouraged Trade and Commerce : and he 
filled the offices of State with men of the highest integrity 
and piety. Indeed, his whole domestic government is at 
once simply and completely described by the title he assumed 
for himself — that of a Protectorate. 

And his Foreign Policy and Administration is acknow- 
ledged on all hands to have been the most enlightened and 
successful which this country had ever known. He made 
England more respected and feared abroad than ever it had 
been before : and concluded wars with Sweden, and the 
Danes, and the Dutch, and made treaties with France and 
with Portugal, on the most honourable and beneficial terms. 
He humbled Spain both in the Old World and in the New, 
and secured Jamaica as an English colony, and fostered the 
rising settlements of North America. And Cromwell it was 
who first entertained large schemes for making England the 
Mistress of the Seas, and the Head of the Protestant Interest 
throughout all the world. 

But the means Cromwell took to gain such of his ends as 
were good, were Unconstitutional, and rendered him guilty 
of political apostasy. As I have not undertaken to speak 
fully of the civil side of this great matter of Cromwell's cause, 
I shall only here say of the first part of this accusation, that 
I think it implies an inadequate conception of how unconsti- 
tutional a matter a Civil War necessarily must be, and then 
that Cromwell's arbitrariness was a necessity of Position, and 
not a result of Ambition. Such things as Revolutions on 
this scale of ours are emphatically what Cromwell calls them, 
c Births of Providence,' and are to be dealt with quite other- 
wise than by the poor pedantry of Constitutional formalities : 
at such times the standard of our judgment should be that of 
Equity rather than of Law, and of a large Human Morality 
rather than of mere National Peculiarities. Not only during 
a Revolution, but for some time after it, there never has 



OLIVER CROMWELL. 279 

been found anything possible but that the Strongest should 
rule with Justice but without Law. The immediate tem- 
porary issue of a civil war must be the absolute government 
of the victorious party : increased and equable Liberty is 
only the ulterior result. The most important question is, 
What did Cromwell do with his extraordinary power? Did 
he use it for good or for evil — for selfish ends or for public — 
to Protect the great body of the people, or otherwise ? The 
facts are, that in the most arbitrary periods of his govern- 
ment he gave to his Council the most powerful control over 
his actions which was then known in the case of any Ruler 
in Europe, and that every class of persons, and every society 
of Christians — except those who had been in arms against 
him, and were wishing to be so again — enjoyed a greater 
degree of liberty than they possibly could have enjoyed had 
he not been their Protector. 

And as to Cromwell's being an Apostate to his principles 
because he did not realise a Republic when he was made 
a Protector, I conceive that this is founded upon a total 
misconception of the fundamental aims of Cromwell's life. 
Cromwell was no Republican at all, and never professed to 
be. He often spoke, indeed, of a Commonwealth and not 
of a Kingdom : but it was not a Democracy that he wanted, 
but a Theocracy : and how different these are essentially, 
though they may be accidentally alike, it would be well for 
you very distinctly to understand. Indeed, the Theocratic 
and the Democratic principles are more opposed than allied. 
The very foundation of a Theocracy is Order and Obedience 
— a sacred inflexible Law — a constitution of degrees and ne- 
cessary subordination — or at least a preservation of distinc- 
tions, and harmonious co-operation — are the very life of it, 
and under it perpetual appeal to a Higher Will, even the 
Highest, and abnegation of self-will, are the first of duties 
and of merits. But in a Democracy nothing is inflexible, 



280 OLIVER CROMWELL. 

nothing sacred : nothing even certain but change : Law is 
the creature as well as the Ruler of its temporary subjects, 
and the reflection, not the guide, of the people's rnind : some- 
thing which they may alter when they can, and reverse even if 
they will : while impatience of restraint is the impulse which 
it fosters, and jealousy of control is a virtue which it ap- 
proves. In the one case God is the People's Sovereign, and 
His Law His Vicegerent, and all hold all things under these : 
while in the other the People is its own Sovereign, and no one 
of them is anything but what his fellows make him, or has 
anything but what his fellows give him, and may take away. 
Now this kind of Constitution of a State — a Theocratic one 
and not a Democratic one — this it was that Cromwell, and 
all true Puritans — and others besides Puritans, too, in these 
days as well as in those — would have established : a Govern- 
ment on Biblical principles, and not on Classical, or on 
Philosophical. Indeed, Cromwell was no Scholar and no 
Speculator : he was by birth a plain English country gentle- 
man : and England was to him the land of his fathers — the 
home of his affections — and it was not, and it never could 
become, a Utopia, or an Oceana, or any kind of theoretic 
abstraction. No ; Cromwell, as I have said, was thoroughly 
English, full of prejudices, full of patriotism — not a Philo- 
sopher, not even a Philanthropist — and therefore I must add, 
so much disliked and spoken against by those whose paper 
theories, or Universal Constitutions, he would neither pro- 
fess to respect nor attempt to realise. And by education 
Cromwell was a Puritan — a man who took the Bible for his 
all in all — his whole Duty of Man — his Statesman's Manual 
as well as his Christian's Rule of Faith : and from this he 
learned no doctrine of Universal Equality or of the Sove- 
reignty of the People, but only of Obedience to Inflexible 
Law as the one way to happiness for a nation or an indivi- 
dual. It is true enough that a King was not necessary to 



OLIVER CROMWELL. 281 

his idea of a Commonwealth, nor was it repugnant to it : but 
then you must also remember that it was exactly thus with 
that Model of a Theocracy which we have in the Bible — 
a King formed no part of the original ground-plan of that, 
though it was afterwards incorporated into it. But while 
there was this independence of the necessity of an in- 
dividual visible sovereignty, Cromwell never recognised, 
nor could do so — and actually he repeatedly resisted — all 
schemes of levelling. The nature of the man's mind and 
his Creed revolted against this : though the necessity of his 
position made him often appear outwardly as the opponent of 
Constituted, and therefore also of Constitutional, authorities. 
His primary and ultimate aims I believe were one — to get 
the social and political, as well as personal, relations of 
Englishmen based on Biblical principles, and to secure liberty 
of worship and of speech and of action for all equally, within 
what he conceived to be these principles. Simple, noble 
aims and efforts were these : and I know of no instance in 
which he was deliberately false to these : but the rather, in- 
stead of growing more and more careless of them as he grew 
more and more powerful, I think the facts are just the con- 
trary : the more powerful he became, the more tolerant he 
became : and if he did somewhat roughly break through the 
formalities of Constitutional legislation, it was chiefly from 
an over-earnestness to realise its object and its spirit for 
those who either could not comprehend it, or could not realise 
it for themselves. 

But Cromwell was a regicide — he put his King to death. 
Assuredly he was one of those who were most active at last 
in bringing about this result: but only, remember, after he 
had been one of the most active also for years in endeavour- 
ing to prevent this result, or any thing like it. Cromwell, 
for years, had been most energetic in the multiplied negotia- 
tions which were carried on by the Parliament and the Army 



282 OLIVER CROMWELL. 

for the Restoration of the King under constitutional safe- 
guards : he even strove for this with a degree of elaborate 
and earnest effort which brought him into disfavour With the 
Army, and spoke in the Commons in favour of a Restora- 
tion 'with a vehemence which excited suspicion.' A Con- 
stitutional Monarchy-^a King reigning in conformity with 
Fundamental Laws, and in co-ordination with a Representa- 
tive Parliament — this which is the distinguishing achievement 
of modern political wisdom — this was first broadly and em- 
phatically advocated at this time by that party of which 
Cromwell was one — and within a few months of the time 
when Charles was beheaded, the realization of this was never 
despaired of — always hoped for. 

This Execution of Charles, however, is an act which has 
exercised the judgments and divided the opinion of many 
able and honourable men : and the majority certainly regard 
it as one greatly to be blamed. And I concur with the ma- 
jority. But the degree of blame to be attached to it, so far 
as Cromwell's character is concerned, I feel I am very incom- 
petent to adjudge ; for I am not able distinctly to separate 
the strong cool light of Modern History under which I judge 
it, from the fainter light, but greater heat, under which he 
judged it. It appears to me now that it was an unnecessary 
severity: that it would have been practicable to have de- 
vised several methods of securing the same end, which would 
have been as efficient and less objectionable. But one also 
cannot but be conscious that one is really very ignorant 
of large portions of the case (which must very much depend 
upon the state of feeling in these times), and that one is 
judging after the event, and therefore not judging the agent 
so impartially as we judge the act. But, however, as a 
general question I am not concerned with it now, but only 
so far as it affects our views of the character of Cromwell. 
And so far as he is concerned, I do not think it fatal to his 



OLIVER CROMWELL. , 283 

character as a Great Man ; it may be rather that which set 
the seal to his sincerity — which exhibited most of all the 
firmness of his faithfulness, and Ills genuine stouthearted- 
ness. The act need not have been for him essentially im- 
moral — one which the Bible — his exclusive, absolute law — 
would indisputably have forbidden: and for all others we 
should do well to remember that it never can be justly con- 
sidered by us now as an example : it must ever be an act 
absolutely unique in our history : one which, as it was with- 
out precedent in the past, must also be without parallel in 
the future. An act it was, we may say of it finally, of im- 
mense significance, and requiring, if much iniquity, then also 
much magnanimity to commit: an act not of party ven- 
geance nor of popular fury, but a solemn, judicial act, delibe- 
rate and resolved : an act the authors of which held them- 
selves openly responsible for their deed before Heaven and 
their Country — an act if not approved by the Parliament yet 
not resisted by any large portion of the people — a Trial by a 
Grand Jury of a Great Criminal — a Jury which first 
affirmed in their Verdict the great principle that a King 
can commit High Treason against a People as well as a 
People against a King — a principle which has since been 
accepted and repeated by our whole Nation in that Depo- 
sition of a King and his Son which was effected by the 
Revolution of 1G88. 

But Cromwell was a Fanatic and a Hypocrite. Both at 
once ? for these are contrary the one to the other. Perhaps 
not: but a Fanatic at first when obscure, and afterwards 
when successful, hypocritical. Now, disbelieving as I do a 
large amount of the Traditions concerning this matter, I 
cannot argue it here as one of evidence : I can merely ask 
you to examine it again, and see whether there is anything 
unquestionably authentic to be opposed to the coherent and 
consistent testimony of the many Letters and Despatches 



284 OLIVER CROMWELL. 

which wc have of his remaining, and of his whole active 
life. For surely so far as these are concerned, there never 
could be testimony more strong to a course more in one uni- 
form direction — so straightforward from first to last, indeed, 
that I suppose it is the very continuous progressiveness of it 
that makes many suppose that there was some deep plot in 
it from the first, and that it was all a clever contrivance 
from his first leaving the Fens to his at last declining the 
Crown. But how a Fanatic then? And where is the 
transition from Fanaticism to Hypocrisy, or from Hypocrisy 
to Fanaticism? As I read his history, there never was any 
time when he was not fervent, and never any time when he 
was not sagacious : and it seems to me to be most emphati- 
cally untrue that he became less zealous about religion as he 
became more successful in politics, or that his character de- 
teriorated in any way as he grew older. But as to this 
charge of Fanaticism, in its popular acceptation, I never can 
consent to argue about it, unless I first see what manner of 
man the accuser is. Fanaticism is popularly interpreted, I 
think, as too much excitement about Religion, and I must 
first see what the objector considers Religion enough in his 
own case, before I can admit his title to pronounce what it 
is for others to be Religious over-much. It appears to me 
that if Religion be something Transcendant — if Faith be in- 
deed a communion with the Unseen and Eternal — if Christ's 
Gospel be really credible — no religious emotions can be rea- 
sonable but those which recognise these things as absolutely 
and universally Supreme, and only those Fanatical which 
disqualify for the performance of acknowledged Duty, or 
which lead men to transgress the fundamental precepts of 
Morality. Now, did Cromwell's Religion make him neglect 
such duties, or transgress such laws ? So far from neglect- 
ing any duty of ordinary life, or leaving any social relation 
ill-discharged, he performed many of the more common offices 



OLIVER CROMWELL. 285 

of humanity with a most considerate carefulness, and a quite 
exemplary diligence and delicacy. There never was any- 
thing lawless about Cromwell's religion : though he magni- 
fied the spirit so much, he always judged of the spirit by its 
fruits. There was nothing even fitful or capricious about 
his mind : nothing eccentric or unsound in any way : it was 
a mind as robustly healthy, as massive and as masculine, as 
any of his time or of ours : a most comprehensive mind, and 
one very versatile and prompt and elastic : in all military 
matters surely superior to every other of his time : and of 
very varied experience, both serving and commanding — in 
all manner of enterprises — of endurance as well as endea- 
vour. Fanatical, think you, in his manoeuvres — his discip- 
line — his commissariat ? both in his coolness before battle, 
and his moderation after victory ? And in his policy ? and 
diplomacy? No, but in his speech, and in his speeches. 
Clumsy and uncouth he was here most truly, over-fervent, 
confused, contorted : but only this : neither fanatical nor 
hypocritical : his manner was only just as much less polished 
than that of any other farming gentleman of his day, as his 
matter was more abundant and more weighty, and his ear- 
nestness about it all more intense. His speeches, as reported, 
are certainly not neat and bright, but with more heat in 
them than light : but they appear to me always fervent, and 
to bear upon them this very additional stamp of sincerity, 
that not one of them seems to have been premeditated, or 
prefigured even, before its utterance : no one of them was a 
work previously elaborated at leisure, and then exhibited 
ready-made, but every one was actually wrought out from 
first to last before the face of his foes, displaying at least the 
hot efforts of a Vulcan, if without his skill. 

But Cromwell's Fanaticism lay in his making the success 
of his measures the test of the Divine approval of them. 
Truly here is the point at which Cromwell is vulnerable to 



286 OLIVER CROMWELL. 

some extent, by those who stand above the Puritan level : 
but not by those who stand on it, or below it. This posi- 
tion of Cromwell's was not necessarily Fanatical, though it 
might very readily become so, even for him, and did become 
so for very many of his contemporaries. This taking vic- 
tories as seals of Divine approval was of the very essence of 
the Hebrew Theocracy, and could not but form a portion of 
'that modified kind of Theocracy which the Puritans believed 
it possible to establish. Puritanism staked all from the first 
on an appeal to the Lord of Hosts to shew in battle of arms 
who were His : and they could not therefore but interpret 
every victory as a fresh presumption of the possession of 
God's favour, and an unbroken series of victories as a proof 
of it almost conclusive. And really, if you will try and put 
yourselves in thought and feeling into this position of a 
Puritan on the eve of the battles of Preston or Dunbar — in 
the position of one who, after having poured out his soul 
before his Maker as to the Lord of Hosts, and in the spirit 
of a Hebrew prophet staked all on the faith that He would 
make the numerically insignificant prevail over the most 
powerful, and even the seeming Impossible come to pass — 
then has found that thousands fled before the face of hun- 
dreds, and whole hosts were the prey of handfuls — could you 
resist the belief that the Lord fought now as of old for His 
Chosen People ? At Preston an army of Forty Thousand 
was scattered to the winds at a blow by Cromwell, and at 
Dunbar Three Thousand were slain and Ten Thousand taken 
prisoners, without the loss on Cromwell's part of two score 
men. At Drogheda and at Wexford, too, he slew Thousands, 
and lost only Tens. And this kind of success was vouch- 
safed to him over and over again: and from the very first 
day to the last, of those nine years of frequent fighting, 
Cromwell never lost a battle, and never received a wound. 
And consider well his whole conduct cf w r ar — his whole 



OLIVER CROMWELL. 287 

life with his army. Cromwell's fundamental principle in 
this matter was that his soldiers should make a conscience 
of their fighting : that when they fought, as much as when 
they worshipped, they should do all unto the glory of God. 
That war if not a duty is a sin, and that men in arms 
ought to be able to fall down upon their knees and pray that 
God would give them Victory as sincerely as they do that 
He would give them Bread — this, as I have said before, was 
Cromwell's way of thinking : a way truly not common, 
but not on that account alone to be condemned. Was it 
not Joshua's way, think you, and Samuel's? Was it not 
while Moses prayed that Israel conquered ? and what are 
many of David's Psalms but Prayers before Battles, and 
Songs after Victory ? Truly I cannot too often repeat that 
this is not the highest way of thinking and feeling — for we 
have no types of these things under our New Dispensation : 
but I do say that it was a nobler way than any other 
warrior's way I know of out of the Old Testament. And 
certainly this may be said, that if War be consistent with 
Christianity — if to be a Soldier be compatible with being a 
Christian — as all ages hitherto have seemed to vote by im- 
mense majorities — this guiding principle of Cromwell's was 
the nearest approach we have seen as yet to the true spirit 
of the Christian Warrior. 

And was there ever in Europe any army so good morally 
as Cromwell's, before his time or since? None that I know 
of, save it may be in the two cases — but these only for a 
short period in each case — of the armies under Admiral de 
Coligny in the preceding century in France, and under Gus- 
tavus Adolphus his own contemporary. In these three armies 
we see perhaps the great body of the Church in each country 
really Militant — the Camp the truest Church in all. But 
Cromwell's seems to me of these far the best — sustaining from 
first to last a noble enthusiasm, and having their characters 



288 OLIVER CROMWELL. 

rather improved than deteriorated by their service — men, 
as it seems to me, of a quite grand manhood for the most 
part, nourished to preternatural power by drawing strength 
out of the Unseen — and so sustained by sympathy with their 
Cause, and by communion with the Divine through the 
Scriptures and through prayer, as to have become invincible 
by any visible numerable force: men whose heroism of, heart 
made every day's duty the means of discipline, and whose 
smallest triumph was to trample upon Death. Consider 
well, too, it was this Army that would not have their own 
Leader whom they loved to become their King. Was there 
ever such an Army before ? And could this Army have been 
all hypocritical ? all fanatical ? or all half of each ? A com- 
pliment this to Hypocrisy and Fanaticism, or to a compound 
of both, which I am not prepared to pay. Doubtless to 
many a Royalist of the time it was a mystery how such 
Hypocrites could be such Ironsides : to me it yet remains a 
greater mystery how such Ironsides should be such Hypo- 
crites. And what the Army was, might not the Leader be ? 
The General like the soldier ? and yet more ? Assume only 
the Religious Sincerity of the Army, and you do much to 
prove Cromwell's. It was his army who liked him most of 
all — the men whom he was most with, and who had witnessed 
the very deepest revelations of his soul. They do not seem 
to have deemed him an Impostor, and truly he was not 
sparing of his Religion with them; he ever prayed with 
them before a fight, and ' uplifted a Psalm ' for them on a 
march. And that honest-minded, stout-hearted Englishmen 
— thousands of them — should have no discernment whether 
the man they lived with, and prayed with, and fought with, 
was an Impostor or not — I cannot believe this. That he 
should dupe for years together those Ironsides — a thousand 
horse soldiers, stalwart yeomen of England, whom no ten 
thousand others could ever conquer — and that he should 



OLIVER CFwOMWELL. 289 

make them more and more daring and enduring through 
Falsehood, and infuse into them an overflowing fulness of 
enthusiasm out of his own emptiness — I cannot believe this. 
Those grim godly men — they had no tie to Cromwell but 
sympathy in a common Cause and recognition of Personal 
Superiority, and Cromwell had no external means of imposing 
upon them : he was ever among them more as a companion 
than a commander : and among them, too, at all hours of 
the day and night, drilling, and marching, and fighting — 
conversing and reading and praying — laying himself bare 
continually for the inspection of the meanest — and that he 
should be and do all this, and be a Hypocrite, and not be 
proved one — I cannot believe this. 

And now, having assumed thus much, I will ask you to 
assume yet more ; yes, to assume, that Cromwell was sincere 
from first to last — in the main, I mean, for I most readily 
allow ambiguous accidentals — and see whether it is not pre- 
cisely such an assumption which renders his whole story 
most intelligible. Reflect well what a man — a Puritan man 
— must or would have felt and done under the circumstances 
in which Cromwell was placed, and then reconsider the 
matter in that light. I cannot go through with you again 
those circumstances, as I have already so much exceeded my 
limits : but I ask you to do so for yourselves carefully and 
conscientiously before you give any final judgment on this 
matter, and I think you will conclude with the conviction of 
Cromwell's substantial sincerity. There is no doubt that the 
fundamental fallacy of endeavouring to obtain Christian aims 
by Jewish instruments was a prolific source to him of subor- 
dinate errors and inconsistencies, and quite marred and stained 
the mere superficial beauty of his character — this I not only 
most readily admit, but also am interested in repeatedly re- 
minding you of —but still I think you will see these errors and 
inconsistencies to have been but subordinate, and that with all 

T 



290 OLIVER CROMWELL. 

such deductions there remained an inner worth and nobleness 
in Cromwell which places him in the first ranks of Greatness. 
But finalty, though I thus speak of Cromwell and of 
the Puritans, I am no Puritan and no political partisan. 
I honour Cromwell politically chiefly as the Champion of 
Toleration — as the consistent and courageous advocate and 
exemplar of Liberty of Conscience : as to his special measures 
of State organization, or constitutional policy, while I may 
see less to blame than many do, yet I see not more to com- 
mend. My conviction is so deep that complete liberty is 
left men by God to frame such institutions — both political 
and ecclesiastical — as may seem to them best, and to change 
them as their changing needs may require, that I cannot be 
enthusiastic about any one abstract form of Government 
either of Church or State ; but my conviction also is so deep 
that only those constitutions which are equably developed 
historically, those which have grown with a people's growth, 
and if I may so say, have been earned by a people's efforts 
— have the united sanctions of reason and experience in their 
favour, that I consider any attempt to force conformity to 
some abstraction on any people, or uniformity on different 
peoples, to be always a folly and most frequently a sin. And 
thus thinking and thus feeling, I deem all convulsive Revo- 
lutions as essentially bad, and all gradual Reformations as 
wisest and most safe. Change, and it may be Progress, I 
look upon as a necessity in a nation, if it would continue to 
live — if it would not even rapidly decay : and most earnestly 
would I exhort all whom it may more specially concern, to 
take heed that there be constantly going on some improve- 
ment of the Present over the Past : but at the same time in 
our present stage of civilization in England it appears to me 
that the alterations and improvements which are most needed 
are not those which are of a strictly political, but rather of a 
social and spiritual kind — legislative and administrative in a 



OLIVER CROMWELL. 291 

measure, indeed, but still far more corporately and indivi- 
dually practicable ; expansions and adaptations of existing 
elements of good, and not any structural organic changes, or 
any spasmodic struggles after untried and uncertain theories 
of Government, foreign to our country's genius, and irre- 
verent to our country's history. 

And as to Puritanism, I accept it indeed as in Cromwell's 
times better than that to which it was opposed, but not as that 
most fitted for our times, and by no means as that which is 
absolutely the best for all times. Far enough from this : Puri- 
tanism,! admit, embodies noble principles, and recognises great 
facts, which are of everlasting significance, and which were 
especially neglected and denied in the times in which it sprang 
up : and it has earned itself a History which no man may 
speak of with disrespect : but at the same time, in my 
opinion, it also neglects, and even denies, other principles and 
facts, which are also of everlasting significance, and which I 
believe it to be the duty of this age to add to those acknow- 
ledged and contended for by these noble men of old. Its 
recognition of God's Law as the Supreme Law of Man, as 
well nationally as individually — this is as good as can ever 
be : but its interpretation of God's written Law, that is not 
so good. Its aim at the establishment of a Theocracy on 
earth — and in one sense its notion of Dominion founded on 
Grace — this also is so good that it can only be objected to as 
being too good to be at present true — the product of a Faith 
so large that it strives too soon to remove mountains, and 
antedates (I fear by centuries) the History of the Future: 
but its means of realising this grand aim, these seem to me 
so inappropriate as to be actually inconsistent with its ac- 
complishment. The fact is, Puritanism is one of the many 
Judaic forms of Christianity : it is a Gospel according to the 
Hebrews, which good though it be as a connecting link be- 
tween the Old and New, cannot really be a final Gospel for 



292 OLIVER CROMWELL. 

the full-grown Christian. Puritanism assumes, as I have 
before said, the equal and universal obligation of the letter of 
the whole Bible : and herein lies its weakness as well as its 
strength : being thus made up of more parts of the laws of 
Moses than of the precepts of Christ — the old garment of 
the Legalist being patched with the new cloth of the Spi- 
ritualist, and so the better rent to mend the worse. Truly 
this is not the best : no, there must be, and there is, a far 
better way of building up a kingdom of heaven upon earth 
than by this use of Old Testament materials, and Old Testa- 
ment implements. Puritanism endeavoured to reproduce a 
Theocracy in the world chiefly by Jewish Eules : our aim 
should be to reproduce a Theocracy simply through Christian 
Principles. Our calling and our task, in fact, is to renounce 
the Letter of Judaism and to realise the Spirit of Christianity 
— always, every where : to establish a Theocracy indeed, but 
only by the indefinite influences of spiritual Conversion, not 
in any way by those of external Compulsion : and to recog- 
nise the Commandments of God in the events of History as 
well as in the Tables of Stone — the Providence of God 
teaching us through the Present as well as through the 
Past, and thus rendering no portion of man's life on earth 
barren of Celestial guidance— none common or profane. 
Vague task, you may say, if not vain calling : but I do not 
think so : on the contrary I believe that it is accomplishing 
almost visibly. But however this be, I do verily believe, 
and in this belief reverently thank God, that so much of this 
indefinite Evangelical spirit has already — by the efforts of 
two centuries since Cromwell's time — been realised in our 
country, and now so pervades our institutions civil and eccle- 
siastical — that the narrow, passionate, militant energy, and 
all those old Hebrew modes of thinking and feeling and 
working, which were characteristic of Puritan times, are irre- 
coverably past, and that a time may come, and come speedily, 



OLIVER CROMWELL. 293 

when Christian men shall look back upon a Religious War 
with a half incredulous, half indignant, consciousness, as on 
the story of some Tragic Imposture or of some Troubled 
Dream. Yes, be sure, dear Christian Friends, as there is 
truth in the Bible of God — as there is virtue in the Gospel 
of Christ — the time shall some day come when God's Will 
shall be endeavoured to be done on earth as it is done in 
Heaven — in no other spirit than in that of Love — and when 
Glory to God in the highest shall be sought only by Peace 
on Earth and Good-will towards Men. 



GIKOLAMO SAVONAEOLA. 



On resuming my Lectures on Great Men I commence with 
the Life of a Religious Reformer. And I do so not only 
because this is a character which it is most congenial with 
my own taste to speak of, but because I do deliberately 
judge it to be one of the very highest with which History 
is conversant, and one which it is especially profitable for 
us all very frequently to contemplate. 

The Great Man, however, whose story I am going to lay 
before you this evening, is one who I can readily imagine 
may not be well known to many of you — whose very name 
even may not be familiar to you all — Girolamo Savonarola. 
And truly he is a man whom, when you know, you may not 
wholly approve : for he is one of a very singular kind, and 
one concerning whom the suffrages of historic judges are 
divided. All I will now say is, that this evening I mean to 
lay before you the grounds on which I give him my voice, 
and that I do so in company with many most widely differ- 
ing minds — for instances, with those of Machiavelli and of 
Luther. But before speaking in detail of his history, I wish 
to point him out to you as a specimen of a series of men 
whom I think we ought very especially to remember and 



GIR0LAM0 SAVONAROLA. 295 

commemorate — the Reformers before the Reformation. The 
Reformation itself (the great Ecclesiastical Revolution of the 
sixteenth century), this I believe more and more every day I 
live to have been a work Divinely excited and approved: 
and if this be so, then surely whoever has martyred himself 
in that cause, or in the like, deserves to live as largely and 
as freshly as any in our memory and our love. And one 
such, and no mean one, was this Girolamo Savonarola. But 
he was but one of many. In almost all the countries of 
Christendom there had been some such from the first. By a 
careful eye there is assuredly to be traced from early times a 
continuous succession of spiritual men, all distinguished by 
their conception of Christianity as a Gospel rather than a 
Law; by a strong aversion to the claims of a Priesthood; 
and by a profound reverence for the Written Word. And 
the spirit of Reformation had of late burned brightly in 
many holy hearts — in Bohemia and in Langucdoc, in the 
plains of Piedmont and among the mountains of the Py- 
renees. The Waldenses and Albigenses are known to you ; 
a few valleys full of Bible-reading, psalm-singing peasants — 
men of faith and men of prayer, and little more — these had 
now witnessed for centuries before the times of which we 
are to speak to-night. And so, too, Peter de Bruys and 
Arnold of Brescia — Huss and Jerome, both of Prague — 
these and others whose praise is in all the Protestant Churches 
had already borne witness singly against the sins of the age 
and Church in which they lived, and sealed their testimony 
with their blood. Dante's solemn voice, too, had scattered 
bitter words against the corruptions of the Popedom which 
had taken deep root in Italy : and in the former half of the 
century in which Savonarola was born, there had been three 
great Councils — those of Pisa, and of Constance, and of 
Basle — in which there had been earnest desire and delibera- 
tion for the Reformation of the Church. And, indeed, the 



296 GIROLAMO SAVONAROLA. 

Roman Church had ever had some amongst its own mem- 
bers who had loudly and emphatically condemned its abuses. 
Its Saints had done so practically — as Bernard and Bona 
ventura ; and so had also its founders of Religions Orders — 
Benedict, Francis, and Dominic — men who strove to create a 
new model of a Church which might serve at once as a 
rebuke and a lesson to the old. But all these Reformers of 
the Roman Church who kept within it, failed in effecting 
any permanent Reformation of it. Bold men doubtless 
were they morally, and of a certain lofty devotion, but 
almost all were so deficient in their conception of the cha- 
racteristic aims and doctrines of the Gospel, as to lack the 
only spirit which can regenerate a Church : their institu- 
tions were but better-built edifices of the same kind of 
material with the old traditional and decayed one, and they 
almost all rapidly degenerated into something worse even 
than that which they were constituted to reform. 

The Reformation of Luther — the Protestant Reformation 
— this was the first truly fundamental one. This was no 
mere declamation against practical abuses — no mere modi- 
fication of ecclesiastical institutions — the setting up of some 
one tradition against some other — the substitution of a purer 
discipline for a less pure. No, truly not only this : it was a 
Reformation of Doctrine, the denial of an old belief and the 
assertion of a new one : it was a cutting at the root of all 
abuses by the introduction of a new spirit : it was a rejection 
of the very central claims of the old Church, a rebellion 
against its authority, an eager questioning and ultimate deny- 
ing of every one of its peculiar and exclusive prerogatives. 
Nay, it was the assertion of the rights of something which 
claimed supremacy over it, and of something also which it 
had no right to bring into subjection to itself — the Bible and 
the Individual Conscience. It was giving the individual 
man a fresh standing place in the universe — a new position 



GIEOLAMO SAVONAROLA. 297 

in this world as well as in the next : a bringing the indivi- 
dual soul face to face with God's Word now, as well as 
declaring that it will be so brought hereafter before the judg- 
ment-seat of Christ. The individual soul bound inextricably 
— in thought and feeling, in obedience and even in merit — 
with innumerable souls of all ages, and quite confused as to 
its own identity and responsibility by the multitudinous 
combination — such was the only constitution of the spiritual 
world known for centuries before Luther. But he— this 
Luther — asserts the Individual Responsibility of man — pro- 
nounces every human soul to have inalienable rights before 
God — maintains that the Church is less sacred and less 
mighty than the Bible of God and the Conscience of man — 
and then in his own self makes good the proof. Opposing his 
own will and belief against those of the great majority of 
other men of all ages, and of his own age, he shews them 
that no Pope nor Emperor, no Church nor Council, can con- 
quer him ; and in this victorious revolt against the long Past, 
I believe laid the foundation of a new order of society, and a 
new world of thought, which was the commencement of a 
yet longer Future. 

And now I must ask you to put yourselves back in imagi- 
nation into Italy in the very middle of the Fifteenth century: 
and in forming your estimate of the Reformer of Florence to 
consider well what it was to live in those dim days, and to 
judge him by their light and not by your own. The great 
political event of that time was the taking of Constantinople 
by the Turks — just at the time Savonarola was bom — and 
this was an event which, however unlikely it might seem, 
had a very great influence in producing the Reformation of 
Europe. It drove very many Greeks into Italy, and they 
brought with them a Literature which for the last thousand 
years had been neglected there — so neglected that many a 
Priest was practically ignorant of the very existence of it, 



298 GIROLAMO SAVONAROLA. 

and even denied the preservation of the New Testament in 
its original tongue. But now that the Greeks come in large 
numbers into Italy, and bring with them numerous manu- 
scripts of Greek authors, and also of the New Testament, the 
slumbering Latin mind is aroused, and when aroused almost 
intoxicated with its large draughts of the new wine of this 
Greek Literature. And the discovery of this New Learning, 
as it was then called, being combined with the invention of 
Printing, all Europe feels the effect of it : mental excitement, 
and inquiry, and criticism, arise rapidly, and spread too as 
they rise : until it would not have been difficult for a spiritual 
spectator to have prophesied that a Revolution which might 
be a Reformation was at hand, even at the door. 

And perhaps also I ought to ask you to bear in mind that 
when we speak of Europe as being a Christendom in these 
ages, or even now, we are using an expression which, if in- 
terpreted at all strictly, will lead us into judgments of men 
at once incorrect and uncharitable. The individual soul, and 
many separate souls, may come comparatively quickly, and 
even almost suddenly, from out of Darkness to Light : but 
a nation can do so only slowly, and after generations : 
many nations can become a Christendom only after many 
centuries. And our Europe, you must remember, has been 
produced not only by the simultaneous junction of many 
nations, but also by the successive fusion of many races : 
and this maJe the work of Chi istianisation yet more difficult, 
and therefore also yet more incomplete. Nothing indeed can 
well be more important for you to remember than that 
Europe was not really Christianised when it became nomi- 
nally so. There never has been such a thing in all History 
yet, as any nation being Christian as an individual is re- 
quired to be in the New Testament. National conversion — 
a whole people being born again of the Spirit as well as of 
water — this, alas, is always a fiction, and often a fallacy 



GIR0LAM0 SAVONAROLA. 299 

which needs much to be guarded against. Verily the Hea- 
thenism of the natural man — the Idolatries of Tradition — 
have never yet all been rooted out of any nation. Certainly, 
Italy after fifteen centuries of Grace had not so eradicated 
these as to have become even substantially Christian. The 
more souls in it even then, I fear, were natural rather 
than spiritual, and very many of the very best seem to have 
had the Christian element in them so crusted over with rem- 
nants of carnality and figments of false philosophy, that they 
could scarcely ever be said to have exhibited that fulness of 
form which is characteristic of perfect men in Christ Jesus. 
The old hereditary influences of Race had not yet disap- 
peared; the barbaric confusion of long centuries had not 
yet been reduced to any clearness, and the whole scheme of 
society, both political and ecclesiastical, was most distress- 
ingly disorderly and most incongruously composite. And 
no individual's mind can get wholly free from the influence 
of its time : indeed I think you will find that all the Great 
Men of History, in proportion as you know them more, will 
become to you more visibly tinctured with these influences of 
race and age — a fact, however, not wholly to be regretted, for 
though it may detract from their worth as models of hu- 
manity, it may also give them a hold upon their times and 
a fitness for their work no otherwise to be obtained. And in 
that particular class of such men of which Savonarola is an 
illustrious specimen — the Preachers of Truth and Moral Re- 
formers — this is so much the more visible, because they are 
of necessity made to bare to us so much more than others 
their intellectual structure. We have already seen this very 
notably even in the few Great Men we have had to do with 
— aye, even in our greatest man — in Luther. What strange 
infirmities, and obscurities, and falsities, even in his Theory 
of the Universe, in his Problem of Life ! But in him such 
blemishes shew the less, his whole mental structure and 



300 GIROLAMO SAVONAROLA. 

texture being so large and strong. In Savonarola these 
spots were larger and the luminary less : he being a feebler 
man altogether than Luther : not gigantic at all, nor even 
robust; only with a very fervent soul in a somewhat ethe- 
real frame. If indeed it were necessary to class them accu- 
rately in some nicely graduated scale of Great Men, I should 
place Savonarola far indeed below Luther, and below Wycliffe 
— but not far ; only so far perhaps as the English mind na- 
turally excels the Italian in dealing with Truth and Duty — 
which, however, is almost as much as the Italian mind ex- 
cels the English in dealing with Art and Beauty. 

But now to his story. 

Girolamo Savonarola was born at Ferrara, in Northern 
Italy, in the year 1452— some generations, you see, after 
Wycliffe, Huss, and Jerome : but also, remember, one 
generation before Luther and Cranmer and Sir Thomas 
More : Henry the Sixth only being King of England : 
Charles the Seventh King of France : Nicholas the Fifth 
the Pope of Christendom. His education, however, was 
good for those times : for he was adopted by his grand- 
father, a then celebrated physician, and a man who being 
fond of literature himself, forced the mind of Savonarola 
by a culture which in ordinary cases would have been 
very injurious, and was perhaps somewhat so in the case 
of his grandson. He introduced him very early to the 
study of Greek and Roman literature, which (as I have 
already said) was just then beginning to revive in the Wes- 
tern world, after many centuries of oblivion : and procured 
him the very best masters — men who themselves had studied 
Grecian letters on Grecian soil. And these advantages Sa- 
vonarola did not neglect, perhaps onJy with too much ardour 
pursued. For he grows speedily restless and speculative, 
and every way excited, under their influence. His acquaint- 
ance with these marvels, especially with Plato, seems to 



IS 



GIBOLAMO SAVONAROLA. 301 

have awakened in him high aspirations, and a consequent 
proportionate dissatisfaction with the systems of thought and 
living hy which he was surrounded. He felt that the world 
in which he lived was antagonistic to the ideal of a noble 
life; and that no subtleties of Aristotle or Aquinas (to which 
he became also addicted) could relieve him from his intellec- 
tual and spiritual embarrassments. But he thought that he 
should find the relief he sought — a refuge from the low and 
carnal and selfish, and an aid to unworldly, and even to 
celestial, life — in the sacred service of the Church. Amid its 
many chambers, and especially amid its many cells, he surely 
thought that he should find companions of his spirit, or at 
least an asylum and a safeguard for his soul from the 
assaults of the evil spirits of the world. To be a Monk, this 
Savonarola thought (as you will remember Luther did) 
would be to renounce the world and to secure Heaven. But 
what kind of a monk ? Why, best of all, having to choose, 
a Preaching monk ; to be allowed to speak authoritatively to 
others of what he thought so much of himself, this would be 
best, this would be even the highest happiness on earth. 
There could be little doubt then, that if a monk he would be 
a Dominican: for St Dominic was the greatest of Preachers, 
and the especial patron of all like himself; learned, eloquent, 
active : with abounding zeal against heresy, of unlimited 
loyalty to the Church. So at twenty-three, Savonarola 
enters the convent of Dominicans at Bologna — on St George's 
Day, 1475 — escaping secretly from home, and abandoning 
all hopes of worldly advancement from that profession for 
which he had been so carefully educated. In a letter which 
he writes to his father the day after his arrival at the mo- 
nastery, he says : ' The reason which induces me to become a 
monk is this : the great wretchedness of the world and the 
iniquity of men — the violence, the adultery, the theft, the 
pride, the idolatry, the hateful blwphemy into which this 



■ •* 



302 GIROLAMO SAVONAROLA. 

age has fallen, so that verily I believe one can no longer find 
a righteous man. I see virtue ruined and vice triumphant, 
and this is the greatest suffering I can have in this world. 
Therefore daily I entreated my Lord Jesus Christ that He 
would rescue me from this defilement : continually I made 
most devout prayer to God saying, Shew me thy truth, 
Lord, for to Thee do I lift up my eyes. And I believe 
that G od has been pleased in His infinite mercy to shew me 
this path, though I am so unworthy of such grace. Where- 
fore would it noi have been most ungrateful, if, having asked 
God to shew me the strait way in which I should walk, 
when He deigned to point it out to me I had not taken it? 
my Saviour, rather a thousand deaths than that I should 
be so ungrateful, or so oppose thy will. Thou, dearest father, 
oughtest to thank our Lord Jesus rather than to weep, yea 
thou oughtest to rejoice and exult. I beg thee then give 
me no more sadness and grief than I have : sadness and 
grief, however, not for what I have done — for if I could be- 
come greater than Caesar Augustus I would not revoke that 
— but because sense resists spirit, and therefore I have a 
cruel conflict to maintain that Satan may not conquer.' 

A specimen this, I think, of the spirit of the man all his 
life through ; exhibiting a sense of moral evil in the whole 
order of things amid which he lived wholly insupportable by 
him : an inward irresistible impulse to seek for himself, and 
if it might be to manifest to others, a better Order: truly 
presenting himself to his brethren for a Sign — a Protest 
against the Present, and a Portent or a Prophecy of the 
Future. 

So he enters the convent at Bologna, intending to be for a 
while but an ordinary lay brother; receiving simply sanc- 
tuary and protection in return for the performance of the 
domestic service of the institution. But the monks soon find 
him too good for this, and avail themselves of his more than 



GIROLAMO SAVONAROLA. 303 

common attainments in classical literature and scholastic 
science, by appointing him to lecture on these subjects. He 
does so — for years he does so ; but he does not find in such 
employment the satisfaction which he seeks in conventual 
life. He aspires to a higher and holier vocation, and nou- 
rishes his own soul with more heavenly food. He learns his 
Bible almost all through by heart, and reads Augustine, and 
prays much. These studies excite his whole man. And 
this excitement is increased by his increasing perception of 
the contradiction between the life of the monks and the 
standard of Scriptural requirement. He grows more and 
more taken up with the directly spiritual part of Religion : 
but he finds that his fellow-monks are not interested even in 
the ceremonial part of it ; and thus sympathy between them 
rapidly grows less. This is a period of fearful mental struggle 
to him, in which he gains insight into many things, sus- 
picions of more. For seven years, however, Savonarola con- 
tinues in this long novitiate, with only the relief of travelling 
from convent to convent to lecture. He finds these other con- 
vents no better than his own, and so he grows daily more dis- 
satisfied both with himself and the conventual life in general. 
The Bible and Augustine make him feel more and more deeply 
the necessity of a personal and a spiritual religion, and the 
religion of the cloisters he visits becomes continually more 
and more distasteful to him. He now abandons all books 
for the Scriptures, and endeavours to mould all his thoughts 
and his whole life on a Rule to be deduced from them alone. 
He attaches himself chiefly to the Old Testament, which was 
new to him ; being neglected very generally in those times. 
In this he is like Luther; and like him, too, in now adopting 
the same fundamental principle — the real origin of his be- 
coming a Reformer — the rejection of all authority as absolute 
but that of the Bible. After struggles of many kinds, he 
becomes a Priest, in order chiefly, it may be, that he may 



304 GIROLAMO SAVONAROLA. 

become a preacher: though at first he is without stated cure, 
and goes about from convent to convent lecturing on phi- 
losophy as before. But not long; for while he lectures his 
heart burns to do more : he must Preach. He tries : his 
first effort is a great disappointment to all — a great mortifica- 
tion to himself. He had longed to be a Preacher above all 
things: but he has no gifts of utterance, he now finds. But 
he still feels that he has something to say which it would be 
better for men if they would hear ; and so he must, he will? 
Prophesy even if he stammers. So he goes into obscure 
places in Lombardy, and tries over and over again, expound- 
ing the Scriptures extempore; to young men and children, 
when he cannot to the more mature. He studies the Apoca- 
lypse, gives up his whole soul to its mystic symbols, and fills 
himself to overflowing with its glorious imagery. And thus 
imbuing himself with the language of a Prophet, he gradually 
fits himself for the office of Preacher. 

Sixtus IV. had now become Pope. This position of Pope 
— for any one who believes in the prerogatives it claims — 
seems to me the very highest point of terrestrial elevation : 
a point from which a man might and ought to look down 
upon mankind as a Shepherd upon flocks of sheep and of 
goats, and treat them accordingly. His Holiness, what a 
Title. ! surely if a man could make good his right to this, he 
would make good also his right to much more. His Holiness 
would be His Majesty indeed — the very Vicegerent of God : 
and as such, king of all kings and lord of all lords on earth. 
But no Pope has ever yet authenticated himself as such : he- 
has never produced credentials of his being Supreme Ruler 
of the kingdom of heaven upon earth, or even an Ambassador 
from heaven plenipotentiary. Sixtus IV. least of all (judging 
him by his fruits) save his immediate successors, Innocent 
VIII. and Alexander VI. — the basest of mankind. Under 
these Popes Savonarola lives. Shall he not take up his 



GIROLAMO SAVONAROLA. 305 

Parable 1 utter his Prophecy ? yea, lift up his voice to its 
highest height? He is a Preacher by vocation; what then 
can he better preach about than these iniquities in high 
places ? If he be a true Prophet he must be to the mis- 
named Innocent as Elijah was to Ahab. And he is. 

It was the year after the death of Sixtus IV. in the first 
year of the Pontificate of Innocent VIII. that Savonarola goes 
to preach at Brescia. Here he essays to expound the Apo- 
calypse ; the spirit, the words, of the book bear up Savona- 
rola, and carry him on into a region of thought and speech 
which he has never been in before. His utterances seem 
scarcely his ; and almost before lie is aware, the words which 
were written of Babylon, he has spoken of Rome. Prophet, 
thou hast not prophesied smooth tilings, and henceforth there 
is no Peace for thee. No Peace; for the words take effect 
both on the People and the Priests: the People admire, the 
Priests hate. What courage! what rashness! say they: 
how noble : how dangerous ! It is not without effect on 
himself too. He is as much astonished at himself as others 
are. His tongue has become loosed and he no longer stam- 
mers : he is an articulate-speaking man : a Voice of Power. 
The enthusiasm of all grows : the denunciation of the 
Preacher is transformed into the judgment of the Prophet. 
Lo, a miracle of mercy he thinks. But Savonarola neglects 
no means of completing by sedulous efforts the conquest of 
the perverseness of his natural man ; and labours as might 
the youngest in the School of the Prophets, that he may 
mentally be worthy of what he now feels to be an unfolding 
mission. It is not, however, until two years after his out- 
burst at Brescia that he manifests himself at all in public, 
and then but slightly ; and not until four years afterwards 
that he comes forth fully to the view-. He gives himself up 
all this long while to Contemplation : he will confer as little 
as possible with flesh and blood. It is this period which is 

u 



306 GIROLAMO SAVONAROLA. 

rich to him in spiritual experiences. It is a pause of pre- 
paration. He has bared his soul to Divine illumination — 
sincerely, continually, fully ; and he believes he has not done 
so in vain. Truths of many kinds have revealed themselves 
to him : unaccountable emotions have arisen within him : 
intuitions, inspirations, visions. 

These four years, then, he waits on Providence, listening 
for a call. In 1487 a call comes to him. A provincial 
chapter of the Dominicans of Lombardy is held at Reggio, 
at which Savonarola is present. Prince Pico della Mirandola 
is there too. He is exceedingly struck with Savonarola, and 
writes urgently to Lorenzo de' Medici to invite him to 
Florence. Lorenzo does so; and Savonarola goes and be- 
comes Prior of San Marco there. And now here at Florence 
may be said truly to begin the remarkable career which 
manifests him as one of the most notable men of his age. 
His position at Florence, however, makes his career of pro- 
phesying in some respects very difficult. The Convent of 
San Marco was one of the splendid erections of Cosmo the 
Father of his Country, and one who shared its peculiar 
treasures might well feel under obligations to the House of 
the Medici. And not only was he invited to it by a Medici, 
but the most distinguished of their friends introduce him to 
whatever is most distinguished in Florence ; they procure 
him the use of a Church for his Lectures, and attend these 
lectures themselves. But they are patronising a Prophet 
unawares. And truly something more than picturesque 
must have seemed to them the sight of Savonarola soon 
after his arrival, expounding the Apocalypse in the garden of 
the Cloister of San Marco. A man of middle stature, fair- 
haired and of a ruddy countenance, with a high and bold 
forehead, but that notably furrowed; his eyes most bright 
and most blue, with long light red lashes : his nose promi- 
nent and aquiline ; his under lip full and quivering. A man 



GIPwOLAMO SAVONAROLA. 307 

sufficiently well proportioned and well knit throughout, of 
upright carriage ; seeming of no imposing presence ordinarily 
— simple, grave, and gentle : but one whose aspect so varies 
its expression that you cannot surely say what manner of 
man he is until you have seen him often, or until you have 
heard him once at least discourse; but then you see that 
whatever he is, he is by virtue of the spirit that is in him : 
that the outer man is but the merest covering of the inner : 
an earthen vessel only for the enkindling oil — a mere neces- 
sary screen for a soul to shine through. See him standing 
out in the open air, on a sultry August day, under the 
chequered shade of the roses in the garden there — the Book 
of the Revelations in one of his hands, while the other is 
stretched forth on high — almost transparent against the blue 
— a mixed throng around him of clergy and of people : the 
very monks climbing upon the walls to hear the wondrous 
speech which falls from his lips. And listen to those words 
of his : words are they not picked and flowery : not melli- 
fluous : the doctrine, too, meat not milk : not seasoned with 
honey but with salt : or to change the figure abruptly, as he 
himself so often does, words that burned where they dropped 
— a fiery flood. * The Church is corrupt — aye, unto its very 
core ; its central throne even is rotten. Italy, thou very 
Paradise of earth, thou hast become a spiritual wilderness — 
even worse — a land of idols and an abomination to the Lord. 
The Church of Italy must be punished in order to be Re- 
formed. The Sword of the Lord will come upon the earth 
for vengeance — come soon and come suddenly.' This is the 
sum at present of the Prophet's burden. His hearers are 
divided ; some say, He is bold and pious ; other some, He is 
learned but dangerous ; and the rest, He is visionary — an 
enthusiast — poor man ! 

Not until a year after he has been at Florence is he in- 
stalled as Prior of San Marco. It had been customary for 



308 GIROLAMO SAVONAROLA. 

the new Prior on his induction to make a formal visit of 
thanks to Lorenzo. Savonarola declines doing this : he will 
hold a spiritual office on other tenure than the favour of Lo- 
renzo. Lorenzo is impressed with this as a novelty at least. 
If the Prior will not come to him, he will go to his convent • 
to worship and walk in the garden, and see what comes of it. 
Nothing comes of it. Savonarola is and does as usual, and 
nothing more. Lorenzo sends through his Chancellor a large 
sum of gold and silver to the alms-box of the Church of San 
Marco. Savonarola in due course opens the box, keeps the 
silver for the use of the Convent, and sends the gold to the 
guardians of the poor of the parish. Such passages as this 
which he speaks the next day henceforth occur in his ser- 
mons: 'A good dog barks always to defend his master's 
house: and if a robber gives him a bone or the like, he 
pushes it aside and ceases not to bark as before.' Lorenzo 
sends two chief citizens to persuade Savonarola to alter this 
style of preaching. Savonarola replies, ' Tell Lorenzo in my 
name, he is a Florentine, and the first of the Florentines — I 
a foreigner and a poor brother ; yet it will happen that he 
must go hence and I remain here.' 

Savonarola feels thus with regard to Lorenzo. He ac- 
knowledges many great intellectual gifts in him and great 
services in past times : but he has brought about in some 
respects an evil change, he thinks, in Florence : he has done 
away with the rude simplicity of the old republic, and has 
substituted for it only a sensuous civilization. Lorenzo he 
considers as undermining religion by his scepticism and 
overlaying it by his luxury, and smothering it by his Pa- 
tronage. He does not think it good for his brethren to be so 
dependent in their spiritual interests upon Patronage ; and 
for himself he does not want any Patronage but that of 
Providence. 

And as to Lorenzo's feelings towards Savonarola, we may 



GI110LAM0 SAYONAKOLA. 309 

say that he treats the austerity of Savonarola with magna- 
nimity. He does not despise him, and he does not persecute 
him; but he dislikes him and counteracts him. He is too 
tolerant to oppose him by force, but he is also too diplomatic 
not to oppose him by policy. So he sets up a rival preacher 
for the people : one Mariano, whom he had previously patro- 
nised, and brought to his other convent of San Gallo. But 
Mariano does not feel comfortable in his work : says his talents 
lie in another direction, and goes to Rome to plead there 
concerning Savonarola, quite otherwise and more effectively. 
Savonarola has already introduced Reform into his con- 
vent, and, of course, in so doing, has made enemies. He is 
thought to be too strict. He himself sleeps but four hours 
out of the twenty-four : he eats only the coarsest food, and 
clothes himself with the coarsest cloth. And every way 
he is sternly moral; and thus the strokes of his censures 
fall with weight, and wound where they fall. For two 
years Savonarola goes on equably, only exchanging the 
last book of the Bible for the first, in his expositions. The 
people of Bologna now ask him to come to preach to them for 
a while — it was here you will recollect that he lived so much 
when young with the medical grandfather — and he goes. He 
preaches with apparent success : but to himself with no great 
satisfaction, for he feels he is leaving his main duty behind 
him ; that he is out of his appointed place ; that he has 
no call, no mission here, save what they or himself have 
given. So he will leave his apparent success for his clearer, 
though more painful, duty. He returns to his preaching at 
Florence, and preaches thus : ' People of Florence, give 
yourselves to the study of the Sacred Scriptures. The first 
of all blessings is understanding the Scriptures. Let us 
publicly confess the truth — the Sacred Scriptures have of 
late been locked up — this light has been almost extinguished 
among us. Has it not been set aside 1 left in the dust ? no 



310 GIROLAMO SAVONAROLA. 

longer studied but made to give way to poetry and vanities ? 
In the pulpit now nothing is quoted but Plato and Aristotle, 
and the like. But is not this Book most of all to our pur- 
pose ? Does it not speak of our times and our persecutions ? 
What sayest thou, brother ? Florentines, go read : When 
the Hebrews did right and loved God they always prospered: 
when they committed iniquity God prepared a Scourge for 
them. Florence, what hast thou done? What sins hast 
thou committed ? how dost thou stand before God ? Shall 
I tell thee ? Alas ! thy measure is filling — yea, Florence, it 
is full, I say. Look, look, a Scourge is coming. Lord, Thou 
dost bear me witness that, with my brethren, I have striven 
to bear up against this burden, this destruction, by fervent 
prayer. We can do no more — I can say no more — my 
strength fails ; there is nothing left for me but to weep, and 
to pray, and to pray yet again. Lord, seest not Thou how 
bad men mock, how they scorn us, how they suffer not that 
any should help Thy servants 1 Every one derides us ; we 
have become the reproach of the world. We have prayed ; 
oh, how many tears too have we shed, how many sighs have 
we breathed ! Where is Thy Providence? where Thy Laws? 
where Thy Faithfulness? Lord, delay not; that the 
ambitious and the wicked may not say, Where is the God 
of these men who have so often repented, and prayed, and 
fasted, and all to no good ? Thou seest the bad every day 
become worse — stretch forth, stretch forth Thy hand, yea 
Thy mighty arm. I ask not that Thou shouldest hear us 
for our merits, but for Thy mercy — for the love of Thy Son. 
Look upon the face of Thine Anointed, and have compassion 
upon Thy sheep. Dost Thou see them all here — all afflicted, 
all persecuted ? Dost Thou not love them, my God ? 
Didst Thou not become incarnate for them ? Wast Thou not 
crucified for them ? Oh, if I cannot prevail, if this work be 
too great for me — take me away, Lord ! release me from 



GIROLAMO SAVONAROLA. 311 

life. I am guilty, Lord, yet, yet have respect not to my 
sins, but to Thine own loving-kindness, and let us all feel 
Thy compassion.' 

The manner in which an Italian — a Dominican — preaches, 
I cannot convey to you : so fervid, so forcible, so full of action 
and of passion ; often as if he would pour out his very soul 
with his speech, and if not attended to, would expire on the 
spot. But this is the kind of sermon with which Savonarola 
wrought upon the mind of the people of Florence, day after 
day : an outpouring of mixed doctrine and emotion, of ex- 
hortation and prayer; speech full of force though not of 
grace : surging up, as it were, from hot springs in his heart, 
and flowing forth from his eyes, his hands, his features, as 
well as from his lips : rendering him unmindful of all but 
his subject, and his audience unmindful of all but himself. 

Lorenzo, as I have said, always respects Savonarola. He 
has now found out by experience of the world what Savona- 
rola has found out long since and otherwise, that for the 
stability of States a strong Morality and some measure of 
Religion are needed : mere philosophy and material civilisa- 
tion alone, these will not suffice. True, the aesthetic and the 
ascetic could not coalesce ; but still the former felt the need 
of the latter, felt his worth. Lorenzo had said before of Sa- 
vonarola, ' This man is a true monk and the only one I have 
ever seen.' But now Lorenzo falls ill, and Death seems ap- 
proaching. He has jewels melted into medicine, and makes 
pills and powders of Pearls. But, alas! the Magnificent Man 
finds this amalgam of his to be no medicine at all, but only 
the quintessence of quackery. Savonarola's presence may 
answer better, he thinks : so he sends for him to his bed- 
side, having dismissed Angelo Poliziano and Giovanni della 
Mirandola — at a banquet very elegant people, but at a death- 
bed utterly inane. Savonarola counsels and comforts him as 
a true Priest and Prophet might do ; he speaks much of the 



312 GIROLAMO SAVONAROLA. 

necessity and virtue of Repentance and of Faith. Lorenzo 
assents with cordiality and begs absolution. Savonarola 
adds, that genuine faith always produces fruits meet for re- 
pentance ; and of these Justice first. He therefore, before 
absolution, requires that Lorenzo give back to Florence what 
he had taken from it, or advise that it should be reclaimed — 
its ancient liberties, its republican constitution. Lorenzo 
demurs : Savonarola repeats the requirement. Lorenzo is 
silent. Savonarola is silent too, and departs. 

The death of Lorenzo is on the 8th of April, 1492 : and 
with his death seems dissolved the gorgeous spell which had 
bound Florence to the family of the Medici. Savonarola is 
now more vehemently prophetic than before. He sees visions 
and dreams dreams. Innocent VIIL, too, dies three months 
after this. Now there may be an opening for improvement — 
a new Era — Savonarola thinks. His heart is full of hope. 
Alas! alas! Roderigo Borgia (Alexander VI.) ascends the 
throne of Christendom, the worst of popes and perhaps of 
men : and thus now is the Priest of Priests the Chief of Sin- 
ners — the Infallible Guide, stone-blind. Bitterly, bitterly, in 
the Duomo and in San Marco, in the Gardens and the 
Squares — does Savonarola inveigh against the corruptions of 
the times, and he takes now for his text the Vision of a 
Hand that he has seen, holding a Sword inscribed with the 
words, ' The Sword of the Lord upon the earth — soon and 
suddenly.' With earnest iteration of these words, and such 
as these, he moves the city. 

And now, lo, Charles VIIL, King of France, has come 
over the Alps with the largest army that for centuries has 
ever crossed them. Surely here then is the Sword of the 
Lord — the Scourge of Italy — the Divinely appointed Pen- 
ance for the Church. All is excitement everywhere. An 
embassy is decreed from Florence. Savonarola is commis- 
sioned to conduct it. He does so, and speaks most fervently 



GIR0LAM0 SAVONAROLA. 313 

for it to the King. Nothing more, however, seems to be 
done by it than to impress upon Charles VIII. a high respect 
for the Preaching Commissioner. The Florentines, however, 
meanwhile rise up against Pietro de' Medici, and he flies, 
with his two brothers, Giovanni and Giuliano, to Bologna : 
and a day before Savonarola returns to Florence from his 
mission, the Medicean Rule of sixty years is at an end. 

On the 17th of November, 1494, Charles VIII. makes his 
solemn entry into Florence. He comes as a Conqueror, but he 
is received as a Guest : a fearful misunderstanding this : one 
speedily causing boundless confusion. And Pestilence, too, 
has manifested itself at this moment — a more fearful visitor 
than the most august of kings. All eyes wait upon Savona- 
rola. And he is not wanting in the heart and head for a 
Leader. He first makes the people prepare food for the 
starving, asylums for the sick, and graves for the dead. He 
exhorts every man to stand to his post — none to flee for fear 
of themselves. He tells them that all Christendom ought to 
be one united Brotherhood ministering to each others' need. 
He then demands an audience of Charles VIII. It is refused. 
The demand is repeated : it is granted. The King, we saw 
just now, was impressed with Savonarola when he went to 
him as Commissioner : unusually so it would seem, for now 
in an impulse of respect he rises from his throne as Savona- 
rola approaches it. Savonarola accepts the reverence with 
dignity, but saves the Monarch from humiliation by holding 
up to him the crucifix he always wore, and saying, ■ This is 
the memento of Him who made Heaven and Earth : you 
honour not me but Him whose servant I am.' And then he 
continues thus (it is said): 'And he is King of kings, and 
Lord of lords: He makes the universe tremble, and 
gives victory to princes, according to His Will and Jus- 
tice : He punishes and overthrows wicked and unjust kings, 
and will ruin thee, King, and all thy army, if thou desist 



314 



GIR0LAM0 SAVONAROLA. 



not from thy cruelty, and set not aside the project thou 
hast conceived against this city. For there are in it many 
servants of God, who night and day make supplication to 
the throne of God. Therefore this will happen to thee, 
and they will scatter and confound thy troops. Know est 
thou not that the Lord can conquer by many or by few? 
Dost thou not remember what He did to that haughty 
Sennacherib of Assyria? Remember that when Moses 
prayed Joshua conquered. And we have prayed and will 
pray : and thus will He do to thee, if in thy presumption 
thou desirest what is not thine. Let it suffice thee to have 
the friendship of this people : and have done with thy wicked 
and cruel scheme against the innocent and faithful. More- 
over, if thou persistest in spending thy time here in this un- 
profitable manner, thou must permit to thy adviser a sharper 
style of reproof than may be well pleasing to thee : in no 
other can he give thee counsel that is good. God has called 
thee to a great work — to the renewing of the Church in Italy 
— as I the servant of God have already emphatically de- 
clared to thee, and as four years before this your Majesty's 
arrival in Italy, I constantly and publicly prophesied. But 
by such means perhaps your Majesty thinks it unworthy of 
God to accomplish such a work. Be it so : God will then 
not be wanting in other instruments to bring it to a happy 
consummation.' 

Two days after this, 28th of November, Charles VIII. left 
Florence : and so doing left Savonarola the greatest man in 
it. And his character rises with his position — which is one 
test of true greatness. He now in some singular respects 
reminds us of Cromwell : in this at least, that his ever con- 
stant aim is to establish a Theocracy ; to set up a Kingdom 
of heaven on earth — a polity in which all things should be 
ordered by Divine ordinances, and spiritual qualities should 
be honoured before all others. But Cromwell was a soldier 



GIROLAMO SAVONAROLA. 315 

and Savonarola a monk. So while Cromwell begins by re- 
forming his troops, Savonarola begins by reforming his 
clergy. He founds a new Convent, speedily well filled with 
real monks — men who voluntarily set themselves apart to 
fight with the world, the flesh and the devil, until death — 
men solemnly dedicating every energy of their souls to the 
holiest uses and the highest aims. And against all seeming 
probability he gets a papal brief for this new regiment of 
Ironside monks, 22d of May, 1493. 

And Savonarola's weapons too, as well as his soldiers, are 
not carnal : at least the chief of all is not, for it is the Word 
of God, read and preached of: to what extent you may judge 
when I tell you that the shops of a large portion of Florence 
are not opened any morning now until after Savonarola's 
sermon. But Savonarola does more than preach; he col- 
lects all the people that the great Duomo will hold, and in 
the presence of all the magistrates of the city, assembles a 
Provisional Parliament, to consult that the city take no harm 
from the deposition of the Medici, and proposes to them that 
the Old Republican Constitution of Florence should be once 
again and for ever established. 

Long discussions arise out of this ; all the vehemence of 
Italian parties is educed ; and though something be settled 
now, it proves but the beginning of commotions. But as far 
as I can judge, the part Savonarola now takes and the 
general substance of his speeches exhibit him as an able, 
reasonable, religious man ; somewhat more of the Old Testa- 
ment type than of the New ; if visionary, clear-sighted also 
in many ways : and if impracticable, yet only so from the 
loftiness of his Ideal. Savonarola wanted, as I have said, 
what many noble minds want, and can never find satisfaction 
but when they are striving for — a Theocracy once again on 
earth — like, but better than, that which the Jews had once : 
a Polity in which there shall be no separation between Law 



316 GIROLAMO SAVONAROLA. 

and Religion, between sacred and secular — in which all citizens 
shall be in one sense priests, and all Dominion in one sense 
founded upon Grace. Not at all a Kepublic such as Gentile 
and modern nations have shewn us, in which all comes of 
the People's Will, and no man is anything but what his 
fellows make him ; no, not this, but rather a community or- 
ganised on a Divine Law, in which every man shall be what 
God has fitted him to be — this was the aim of Savonarola. 
' Thou knowest, thou knowest, Florence,' he exclaims in 
one of his sermons, ' that I would have thee a spiritual state 
— a truly Christian state : I have always shewn thee clearly 
that a kingdom is only strong in proportion as it is spiritual, 
and can only become more spiritual by being more closely 
related to God.' Ah yes, Church and State both in one — 
the kingdom of God no Utopia, but visible here on earth — 
Christianity a Reality for the Living, and not merely an In- 
heritance for the Dead — this is an ideal which, having once 
been set up among men, can never be withdrawn, and which 
assuredly will be pursued by some as long as it shall not be 
realised. To build up on earth a City of God — to establish 
here below a living Law in which there may be recognised 
the same spirit as that which we believe sustains the saints 
above — to make earth all one with heaven in kind, and differ- 
ing only in degree — this must ever be now the aim and the 
mission — the doctrine and the effort — of every true Prophet 
of God. 

In a sermon before the Signory of Florence, Savonarola 
now states the various opinions of the greatest philosophers 
and theologians on the best Constitution of a State : and 
endeavours therefrom to develop one which would be best 
adapted to modify the historical constitution of Florence. 
But the great bulk of the people — and many even of their 
leaders — were not such as Savonarola : they were guided 
more by party traditions than by abstract principles : and 



GIROLAMO SAVONAROLA. 317 

the prophetic legislator appeared to them by far too candid 
and too considerate. Every one knew the significance of the 
Piagnoni and the Palloni — the Bianchi and the Neri — and 
still more clearly of the Soderini and the Vespucci, and the 
like — and the general outline of the principles they respec- 
tively represented, the popular and the aristocratic. Savona-. 
rola, however, is desired by the Signory to draw up his views 
on Government in writing. He does so in a document mani- 
festing much legislative faculty, and no fanaticism whatever. 
The last passage in that document is this : * As in every- 
thing so likewise in the State, spiritual force is the best and 
worthiest of ruling powers. Hence it is that even from the 
beginning a very imperfect state of Government will flourish 
in complete security, and with time will acquire perfection, 
if it be but universally acknowledged that the end of all 
Christian States is the improvement of the morals of the 
citizens by the suppression of all open wickedness, and that 
the truly Christian life subsists in the fear of God : if, more- 
over, the Law of the Gospel be esteemed as the Rule and 
Measure of Civil Life, and of all laws that are made : if, 
further, all citizens shew a true love of their country, and 
with uncorrupted self-love subject their own personal interest 
to the general good : and if, finally, a general peace shall 
have been concluded among the citizens, all past injustice 
of the former Government forgiven, and all older hatred be 
forgotten — such unity will make a state strong within, and 
secure and even feared without.' 

On the whole, at this crisis of his history we may say that 
Savonarola is not wanting in any thing which we may justly 
have expected of him : and that he was an able and faithful 
leader of those who looked to him for guidance : a man saga- 
cious and intrepid : with an honest heart and a single eye, 
and all occupied with public interests and not with private. 
A man not oppressed with his multiplied labours, nor cum- 



318 GIR0LAM0 SAVONAROLA. 

bered with his much serving : rather rising with the occasion 
and above it : the more turbulent others, the more tranquil 
he : calm and clear indeed to a degree which is the admira- 
tion of many who were spectators of him at the time, and the 
wonder of himself when years afterwards he looks back upon 
himself at this period of his life. Truly much had he to do 
— as all must have in making new constitutions for a people. 
Much, however, is he helped at first by the patriotism of his 
fellow-citizens : for at his solicitation all the magistrates and 
officers who had been elected on one rough draft of a con- 
stitution, readily abdicated their offices, in order that they 
might be remodelled on a more popular basis. The legis- 
lative power is at length vested in a General Council consist- 
ing of a thousand citizens of not less than thirty years of 
age, and of a Select Council, of eighty members, of not less 
than forty years of age. And on the 23d of DecembeF, 1494, 
by Savonarola's special efforts, an amnesty for the Medici is 
proclaimed, and the Government of Florence apparently 
settled on a reasonable and a Christian foundation. In all 
these provisions you will observe that though Savonarola's 
influence is so great, it is never exerted to serve himself in 
any way. He never solicits either office or recompence of 
any kind — neither power nor wealth. All he asks for him- 
self is unlimited Liberty of Prophesying. And when he has 
got this, thus it is that he prophesies : l If we ask whence it 
comes that the Church has so much lost her original purity, 
the answer is, because the Holy Scripture, which demands 
and nourishes the Christian life, which ought to be read and 
given as the true nourishment of the soul to the faithful, has 
fallen into oblivion. For Logic, Philosophy, and Legal 
Science, there are teachers appointed : and all Arts have 
their masters. But now no one teaches the Holy Scrip- 
ture, nor Will any one learn it. Since this light has been 
extinguished it has been night. Instead of preaching Christ 



GIKOLAMO SAVONAROLA. 319 

they offer for money from the pulpit a mixture of Philosophy 
and Christianity ; or one hears nothing at all but of Aristotle 
and Plato, of Cicero and Demosthenes, and other heathens, 
whose words even they cite without spirit or Christian feel- 
ing Thus now the most sacred things 

are degraded in the pulpit : Theology to rhetoric, and Poetry 
to fable. They hold markets, too, in the churches- . . . 
And to disturb even the still devotion of individuals, the 
devil has begun to bring into operation music and the organ, 
which only please the ear and edify nothing. In the ancient 
Polity, it is true, there were many festivals with songs, trum- 
pets, a tabernacle, and the like. But this for the most part 

had an end with Christ I also tell you 

that nowhere in the Gospel is it commanded to have golden 
or silver crosses, or other costly things in the Church. But 
the Gospel does say, ' I have thirsted and thou hast not 
given me to drink,' and the like. Therefore make a law that 
all these costly things may be sold. Look to it that those 
who gave them are contented with that law, that no bitter- 
ness may ensue, and then will I be the first who shall lay 
hands on the cups and crosses of my cloister to feed the 
poor from this superfluity. 

1 And consider the whole state of the Church : how few in 
this day do good and walk in the path of God. He who 
looks considerately must confess that Italy is now all but 
at the very height of wickedness. But when the measure is 
full, the Sword must clear the way for a better state of 
things. Yes, thy baseness, Italy — Rome and Florence — 
thy godless life, thy usuriousness — they bring Ruin. There- 
fore have I already long ago warned thee and called con- 
tinually — Do Penance, Florence : lead a Christian life. 
Repentance is the only means of safety in the time of trouble, 
and can even mitigate much of it. Florence, I warned thee 
before the rest : for from thee as the centre of Italy shall 



320 GIROLAMO SATONAEOLA. 

the Reformation proceed — from thee shall all Italy be 
renewed. 

' But the false and lukewarm have perverted the people 
and prejudiced them against the truth — before all, the wicked 
Priests and servants of the Church are the guilty cause of 

this corruption, as also of the coming calamities 

ye Priests and Heads of the Church, leave your pluralities 
and your pleasures, while yet there is time to repent, and 
keep your masses with devotion. ye monks, leave your 
costly robes and silver decorations — your abbeys and your 
benefices — and give yourselves up to simplicity, and work 
with your hands as your reverend predecessors did. Ye 
merchants, too, leave off usury — give back what you have 
unjustly gained, and of your abundance give to the poor. 
my brethren, if you leave not these things — your superfluities 
and your vanities — willingly now, you must soon do it by 
compulsion — for God will punish you if you change not your 
life and your manners.' 

And much more than this did he say : like an old prophet 
it seems to me : a Baptist Preaching surely, most needed : 
only elementary indeed when true, and not always the best — 
but always as good as anything preached at that time, and 
often, often better. 

Rome does not remain unstirred by such Preaching, so 
near it as this is at Florence ; especially as the Medici are 
there, and that Mariano whom we have before seen retiring 
from a contest with Savonarola at Florence. Worked upon 
by these the Pope begins an attack upon Savonarola. He 
sends a brief to prevent his preaching as appointed during 
Lent this year, 1498 : and sends him to Lucca. Savonarola 
prepares to obey, but in his farewell sermon there are some 
words of passionate but affectionate reproach to the Floren- 
tines for their conduct during his ministrations among them, 
and these words work on the people ; and the Magistrates 






GIR0LAM0 SAVONAROLA. 321 

and Signory write to the Pope to beg him not to send Savo- 
narola away from them, or to believe any representations 
against him, and to withdraw his brief. The Pope recalls 
his brief. Savonarola now expounds Job, and keeps in a 
good measure free from public excitements. But he has 
written to Charles VIII. and had an interview with him at 
Poggibonsi : and Charles, as you know, is the special enemy 
of the Pope, and Savonarola had considered him as the De- 
liverer of the Church, or at least as its Divinely appointed 
Scourge. A letter of Savonarola written in this spirit to 
Charles had come into the hands of the Pope. He invites 
rather than cites Savonarola to Rome, that he might speak 
to him, he says, concerning his gifts. But Savonarola has 
been wasting long: he has now grown very feeble: only 
strong enough to preach through the fitful false strength of 
fever : till at length he wholly breaks down, and Domenico 
da Pescia occupies his place in the pulpit of San Marco : and 
a note-worthy man is this. 

But in October Savonarola re-enters his pulpit and speaks 
thus : — ' Having permitted the body to repose a little, I now 
purpose to begin anew to strive, and not to cease again from 
striving, until I die — but then to conquer. Doubt not even 
if I should die, that in this way also I shall be victorious. 
Yes, if I die, God will raise up others. But however this 
be, I have this morning appeared anew on the field of battle 
to see how the troops stand, and whether all things be ready 
to renew the war.' He had before said, with great foresight, 
some time before this, ' Do you ask me what will be the end 
of this conflict? I answer, Victory. But if you ask me in 
particular through what means, I answer, through Death 
But then, brethren, remember Death is not Extinction — it is 
Resurrection. It rather serves to spread abroad the Light. 
And this Light is already spread wider than you believe. It 
is already in many hearts — so many that if you knew how 

x 



322 GIROLAMO SAVONAROLA. 

many, not only in this place but in many places, you would 
be astonished and change your lives. Write to Rome that 
this Light is in very many places more than they know of, 
and that they cannot put it out — that if they quench it in 
one place then it will break out in another stronger and 
higher — that this Light will be kindled soon in Rome itself, 
and in all Italy. Write, too, that I invite all the learned 
men of Florence and Rome — of Italy at large — to oppose 
this truth, and that I am ready to defend it in every way, 
and in any way.' 

His Preaching had almost from the first produced some 
considerable outward moral Reformation. Men began to 
give themselves more and more to honest industry, and to 
leave off positively vicious amusements. To many things 
they learned now to say, It is Forbidden, and admirable laws 
had been passed by his influence. Latterly the Advent Ser- 
vices of the Church had been kept with more devotion than 
ever those of Lent had been before in the memory of man. 
And now the crowds that attend his Preaching are so great 
that even the Duomo has to be fitted up something like a 
theatre to accommodate his hearers, many of whom came 
from far, from Bologna even, and from Pisa. The number of 
the young, too, who enrolled themselves as his disciples is 
now so great that he organises them into a distinct Order, 
and places them under the direction of his most able coadjutor, 
Domenico da Pescia : and these again at Carnival time this 
year organise bands of still younger persons who go in pro- 
cession through the streets, and beg from house to house — 
for the love of Christ and the good of souls — for whatever 
there may be in them of objects of vanity, of luxury, and of 
vice : and these they pile into great heaps, and burn on the 
Eve of Ash Wednesday in the presence of the magistracy of 
Florence, amid Psalms and Hymns and spiritual songs. And 
here began a strife between the aesthetic and the ascetic 



GIR0LAM0 SAVONAROLA. 323 

principles — such as distinguished our own Puritan contest — 
which was but an exaggerated expression of what was true 
on either side. Savonarola's enemies are now loud against 
him, and he is regarded and represented by them as the 
Troubler of Italy. His reply from the pulpit is after the 
pattern of Elijah's — l It is not I who have troubled Italy, but 
you who have forgotten your God, who have despised His 
sacraments and trafficked with His ordinances ; who instead 
of practising Justice, have oppressed the poor, being full of 
arrogance, fraud, envy, hate, and all turpitude : all which 
things you do so publicly that heaven and earth cry out for 
vengeance. It is not I who have troubled Italy : no, I have 
only announced, what I announce again, that Punishment 
shall shake the land, and will not delay.' 

Many of his friends now accompany him, armed for his 
protection, when he goes to Fiesole and back, and even on 
his way from San Marco to the Duomo they do the like — 
they think that there are plots against his life. There is 
certainly one plot against him, of so different a kind that 
it is full of significance ; displaying at once the consistency 
and integrity of Savonarola's character, and the importance 
attached to him by those who were well qualified to judge. 
A messenger arrives at Florence from Rome, and seeks the 
cell of Savonarola, by whom for three days he is courteously 
entertained. They converse incessantly, the blander of the 
two saying most. On the evening of the third day the mis- 
sion of the Roman has not much prospered. Savonarola is 
as much a Prophet as he was at first : a most impracticable 
man. Wearied with the utterance of fair words, and relying 
on the infinite corruptibility of human nature, the Pope's 
commissioner — the clever man of the world, who deemed 
that he knew how to deal with men most diplomatically — ■ 
produces a Papal proffer of a Cardinal's Red Hat. Savona- 
rola with no lack of courtesy replies, ' Come to my sermon 



324 G1B0LAM0 SAVONAROLA. 

to-morrow and I will give you my answer.' Thus invited, his 
guest goes to the unwelcome preaching. After listening to 
a torrent of speech against the corruptions of the high places, 
more lava-like than ever, he collects the answer to his mis- 
sion from these words, ' Every other covering for my head 
will I refuse unto death, except it may be one which shall be 
dyed red with my blood.' 

When Savonarola began his public preaching in 1489 he 
prophesied that it should continue eight years ; and in this 
1496 it is beginning to look probable that at least it may 
not continue more. The young men of Florence had long 
been irritated by his preaching, and this year the Great 
Council is opened to all of the age of twenty-four, and an 
adherent of the Medici is elected its President. The Empe- 
ror Maximilian, too, was attacking Livorno, and there were 
other troubles. Savonarola had been very much weakened 
also by illness, as I have said. But he is, as I have also 
before said, elevated not depressed by difficulties. His 
preaching waxes bolder and more bold : until he arrives at 
this saying — a saying laid down by Augustine and repeated 
by Wycliffe in these words — ' No one in mortal sin hath in 
the sight of God a true dominion over any of His creatures,' 
a declaration prolific of consequences, and of this one among 
them, of being understood to mean that the existing Pope 
had by his sins forfeited the right to govern the church. 
This is reported at Rome, and he is cited there, being sus- 
pended from preaching the while. Savonarola sends a long 
and able vindication of himself to Rome. He does not go 
himself, but from Advent to Easter 1497 preaches as usual. 
And at the Carnival the scenes of last year are repeated on 
a large scale. A large pyramidal Structure is erected in the 
chief market-place, and on it are piled vast heaps of vanities : 
numerous pictures and statues offensive to a Puritan taste : 
precious tapestries and much-admired books : and this a 



GIROLAMO SAVONAROLA. 325 

long Procession approaches and surrounds, and amidst a 
concert of bells, and trumpets and cymbals, with singing and 
the loud shouts of the Signory and the people, sprinkles with 
holy water and sets on fire. Then commence a series of 
dances, as well as songs, which are meant to be profitable 
substitutes for the customary profane ones, but which to the 
colder and soberer judgment of an English puritanism would 
seem fantastical or fanatical. But let no one who has not 
seen a Carnival in Italy judge of this until he has. 

The enemies of Savonarola are active. He fully under- 
stands his position, and determines to make his present con- 
troversy with the Pope a matter of life or death, not only for 
himself, but for the Church of his times. He writes letters 
to the Kings of France, Spain, Hungary, and England, and 
to the Emperor of Germany, exhorting them to call a Gene- 
ral Council. A copy of these letters is laid before the Pope. 
From this moment the war does become one of life and death. 
The Pope writes to the Signory of Florence to proceed against 
Savonarola, whom he calls in his letter ' the Son of blas- 
phemy.' Savonarola hearing that this brief had come, hav- 
ing of late yielded his pulpit very much to the Prior of 
Fiesole, instantly resumes it, and exclaims, * I believe it to 
be the will of God that I shall not submit to the decision of 
such a corrupt tribunal as that which would now judge me, 
and verily I shall be condemned by God if ever I am weak 
enough to ask absolution for so righteous a Resistance.' 
The Signory defend him, write to the Pope, write to their 
Ambassador at Rome. Savonarola preaches at the Duomo 
on Ascension-day. He speaks with great boldness, but is 
interrupted by his enemies, and the whole service broken up. 
He publishes directions to his followers which exhort them 
to ' Remain quiet, be prudent, be pure, and be doing good; 
continue instant in prayer : defend the truth without hatred 
and bitterness, while you expose the folly of the godless ; for 



326 GIROLAMO SAVONAROLA. 

he who persecutes is ignoble, and happy he who suffers per- 
secution.' But things grow no easier for Savonarola. On the 
12th of May, 1497, he is excommunicated by the Pope. He 
forgoes the pulpit, but publishes an address to his followers 
— an address, as it appears to me, precisely such as a mature 
Christian would write: as calm and courageous as any 
world's hero would have written: as gentle and as faithful as 
that of any Church's martyr. On the 22d of May, Savonarola 
writes again to the Pope, and on the 8th of July, the Signory 
do the same in his favour : and the Brothers of San Marco 
transmit to the Pope a Paper in defence of him which was 
subscribed by 200 brothers. The Pope offers to withdraw 
the Excommunication if Savonarola will appear in Rome to 
justify himself. Savonarola will not do this : and he now so 
far disregards the Excommuncation as to celebrate the mass 
on Christmas-day, and give the communion to the Brethren 
and several hundred others. And on the 1st of February, 
1498, the Signory grant him leave to resume his Lent 
Preachings. And so there he is again, with all the raised 
seats and steps replaced — and the crowd too to hear him, 
as of old. No change is there either in the Preacher, save 
that his denunciation of the sins of the Clergy, and his asser- 
tions of the Fallibility of the Pope, are yet more vehement 
than of old. The Pope threatens Florence with an inter- 
dict if proceedings are not taken against Savonarola instantly, 
and there be sent prisoner to Rome ' that Son of Perdition.' 
Many days pass, and Savonarola is not so sent. Another 
letter comes from the Pope. The Signory (which has been 
several times changed since Savonarola was Excommunicated) 
now sends a command to him to preach no more. On the 18th 
of March therefore he ascends his pulpit for the last time, 
and after as vehement a denunciation of the Pope and of the 
ungodly men among the Priests as ever he delivered, he 
closes his sermon with declaring that the Power of the Pope 



GIROLAMO SAVONAROLA. 327 

has become in the hands of its present possessor, a Power 
not of God but of Satan, and that it is a power which he 
must resist to the last. ' Let the Lord only act : He has 
been the Teacher of all Prophets and Holy Men. This is 
the Master who handles the hammer, and when He has ac- 
complished the work, lays it aside. So He did to Jeremiah, 
whom He permitted to be stoned at the end of his preaching, 
and so will He do with this hammer when He has used it 
after His own way. Well, let us be content. The Lord do 
what pleases Him.' Thus Savonarola excommunicates the 
Pope — at the risk, at the cost, it may be, of his own life. 
No mere Rhetoric this ; we shall see. 

On the 7th of April, 1498, is enacted the scene of the 
Ordeal, in which Domenico da Pescia on the side of Savo- 
narola, and Giuliano Rondinelli on the part of his opponents, 
undertake to pass through the flames, each trusting to the 
truth of his cause to secure him immunity from injury. 
Elaborate preparations are made for this, and at the hour 
and place appointed, crowds assemble, full of terror and of 
wonder. Each champion too is at his place, and both seem 
prepared to carry through their undertaking. Savonarola 
delivers the host into the hands of his disciple. The Fran- 
ciscans upon this protest against what is so sacred being 
subjected to the flames. Domenico refuses to enter the fire 
without a protection which he believes to be Divine, and on 
which he had counted from the first. The argument spreads 
among the crowd, and confusion spreads with it, until the 
assembly is dissolved and the ordeal abandoned. What it 
was right for Savonarola to do in this detail of a matter of 
which so much was wrong, I cannot say : but the effect was 
that many of his friends were disappointed, and many of his 
adversaries encouraged by this event : and the next day a 
crowd attacks one of the Churches in which a follower of his 
is preaching, and disperses the congregation. They proceed 



328 GIROLAMO SAVONAROLA. 

also to San Marco where Savonarola is, and throw stones 
among his congregation. Confusion and violence ensue, and 
one of the followers of Savonarola is slain, at the foot of the 
altar. The Church is rilled with smoke and with fighting 
men — with wounded and with killed. The tumult continues 
until midnight, when the Signory demand that Savonarola 
place himself under their safe-conduct. Addressing his 
brethren, and exhorting them to constancy and courage and 
calmness, he goes forth — under a roof of protecting lances — 
a prisoner, however, practically, rather than a guest. ' Two of 
his brethren also go with him, resolved to share whatever 
may happen to him. This proceeding pleases the Pope, who 
immediately appoints commissioners of Inquisition into his 
case. These examine him by torture, desiring him to con- 
fess that he is a false prophet, and one who deceived the 
people. Savonarola while sensible is firm, calm, unchanged : 
but as he is fainting with anguish they torture his words as 
well as his body, to make him seem to Recant. When Sa- 
vonarola recovers himself, and the words they have written 
down as his are read over to him, he refuses to confirm them. 
They torture him again till he faints, and again he refuses to 
sanction their representations of his half-expiring speeches. 
This is done over and over again, with a sickening barbarity. 
And there is also woven a thick web of machinations against 
him, to condemn him with some shew of justice, and to make 
him openly to Recant. But Savonarola is firm, is tranquil — 
even employing the time of his imprisonment in commenting 
on the thirty-first and fifty-first Psalms. Singular man : he 
had commented and preached on many other Psalms in the 
course of his public ministry, but he always said when he 
came to these in course, that he would pass over these, and 
save .them for that period of suffering which he believed 
would come upon him some day, and then they would be a 
fresh and especial source to him of strength and of comfort, 



GIROLAMO SAVONAROLA. 329 

and his own experience of their truth, fulness, and beauty- 
would qualify him better to expound them to others. And 
so now he meditates on these, and comments : and these 
outpourings of his heart were published immediately; and 
were republished, too, by Luther at the beginning of his 
career, with hearty appreciation and high commendation; 
and they are extant now. Such as I have seen of them 
exhibit the heart and mind of Savonarola as we all should 
wish to see them — full of humility and self-surrender — of 
Faith, Hope, and Charity. The end, however, of his case 
is, that he is pronounced by the Papal commissioners to be a 
Heretic — a Disturber of the Church — a Peiverter of t^e 
people — one not worthy to live. There is another and a 
final hearing, however, of Savonarola, and in this he declares 
most emphatically that all he had ever said or preached was 
substantially Truth, and that all that had been said concerning 
his recanting was either false on the part of others, or on his 
part the mere effect of pain, and the disabilities of torture : 
and that were he subjected to the same unnatural tempta- 
tions he probably might so flinch again, but that if he did 
they might be quite sure that he would reassert again and 
again, as often as they should release him, the very same 
doctrines that he had preached all his life through. Finally, 
therefore, he and two of his brothers — Domenico and Maraffi 
— are condemned to be hanged and burned at Florence, on 
the day of the Vigil of the Ascension. And on that flowery 
spring day — in that brightest of ail bright cities — and almost 
under the Shade of the Duomo of Santa Maria de' Fiori — 
they heap up a funeral pyre — on the very spot where a few 
months before had been burnt in joyous carnival the symbols 
of the vices of Florence, and only a few weeks before had 
stood that pile which was meant for another fiery ordeal. 
The same crowd is there, and the same chief actors in the 
scene — the same fluctuations of emotions swaying to and fro 



66\) GIROLAMO SAVONAROLA. 

the mingled multitude, and the same, or rather greater, hero- 
ism of heart in the Champions and Confessors of the Right. 
Arrived at the place of execution, Savonarola is asked 
whether he has anything yet to say before his last journey. 
He replies, ' No, nothing but this : Pray for me, and tell my 
friends that they take no offence at my death, but continue 
in my doctrine and in peace.' He ascends the fatal pile — 
pronounces the Apostles' Creed — and dies. 

A few words more on his character and I have done. His 
was, then, a quite compound character mentally, though one 
noble and simple morally. He was a man of clear aims and 
very healthy spiritual instincts : but these were sadly hin- 
dered and stifled by the bad culture they had, and by the 
inevitable evil influences by which they were from first to 
last surrounded. His whole soul was hungering and thirst- 
ing after Righteousness, but his mind was full of strange 
superstitions — a tangled mass of traditions — confusing and 
confounding but too often his elements of Truth. So it is to 
this day, as it seems to me, with the best of the Roman minds 
that I know of: and how much the Reformation, by bringing 
the mind of man back to the Written Scripture as the only 
Obligatory Law, has, if I may so say, cleansed the Modern 
Mind, I would have you take this occasion very gratefully to 
ponder on. Remember, too, that Savonarola had dwelt from 
infancy within the very central circle of Papal corruption, 
and that therefore the atmosphere which he had breathed 
from birth was drugged with impurity. No spiritual consti- 
tution could have grown up herein without being fearfully, 
if not fatally, diseased. Merely so to resist as to survive 
such infection was in itself a Victory. And it is this strong 
struggle between the natural and the spiritual — the Scrip- 
tural and the Traditional — in Savonarola's nature, that makes 
intelligible to us many of the extravagances of his doctrine 
— many of the piercingly wild tumults of his preaching. To 



GIR0LAM0 SAVONAROLA. 331 

a mind growing clearer and clearer in its perception of Evan- 
gelical truth, try and imagine how great must have been the 
increasing tendency to cry aloud and spare not — to denounce 
Judgments with a 'Thus saith the Lord' — when three such 
Popes succeeded each other as Sixtus IV., Innocent VIII., 
and Alexander VI. What would you have done? Kept 
silence, or spoken ? If spoken, then whisperingly or loudly ? 
There was nothing, however, personally bitter, or selfish, or 
revengeful, in his denunciations — nothing unchristian in the 
general spirit of the man. Truly he was one of the least 
fierce of all Reformers : a most mild, kindly, genial man, 
one would say, by nature — perchance even too much so for 
his work: very like our Cranmer in some things. They 
were both men of a delicate organisation ; too sensitive, too 
sympathetic, for the rough work of Reformation : not hardy 
men, with nerves dulled and skin thickened in early life by 
actual struggle and collision with men in the world — with 
daily labours out of doors. They were both men too much 
of the Cloister — Preachers chiefly : scholar-like, not soldier- 
like. Like Cranmer, too, Savonarola winced under torture, 
but still to a much less degree than he : and in all ordinary, 
and even extraordinary, difficulties, his whole life through, 
there had been a superior courage : no flinching from Duty, 
no trembling in Danger : no fear of the face of man : no 
trafficking of Truth for anything: no selling for messes of 
pottage his spiritual birthright or inheritance : no bartering 
of his Prophet's mantle and rough garments for the soft 
clothing to be found in Papal courts. No, from first to last 
a faithful man, labouring in a most crooked and perverse 
generation, and preaching the most singularly sad tidings 
always. That the sins of Italy were so great that a Scourge 
worse than the old Jewish Captivities must be its Penance — 
that only by Suffering the most intense could expiation be 
made for its iniquities — yea, even it may be, that it must 



332 GIROLAMO SAVONAROLA. 

die before it could rise again to glory — such was his Burden: 
one lifelong Prophesying of Lamentations: the very sor- 
rowfullest Preaching a modern nation has heard. He sees 
everywhere and always but this one Truth — Misery the 
inseparable consequence of Sin, and Regeneration, for a 
nation as well as for an individual, only through a New 
Birth, which is as a Resurrection after Death. This seems 
to him written in all History, Sacred and Profane — yea, 
even in Nature itself — and thus, wherever he turns he reads 
but a scroll written within and without with Lamentations, 
and Mourning and Woe. All other things would be to him 
tolerated if he might but rouse men to a conviction of their 
true state, and to an earnest self-surrendering effort to meet 
it with Penitence and with Penance. The sword and the 
flames would be to him but playthings then : no deadly 
thing could harm him: he would count loss gain, shame 
glory, and Death as Victory. And so he struggles on, with 
brave efforts in public, with great prayers in private — a 
grand and loving enthusiasm for his brethren's welfare at 
times enkindling his whole heart, but a wild wail, as if that 
heart were broken, perpetually saddening the music of his 
speech. Truly no modern man of whom we have record 
ever had in him more of that characteristic spirit of the 
Ancient Prophet — a profound sadness at the sight of sin — 
than Savonarola had. I always consider Jeremiah as per- 
haps the best type of the Ancient Prophet ; the most ex- 
emplary union of impassioned yet enduring courage — of a 
boldness and a tenderness equally boundless. He had no new 
truths to teach, or few: it was the contrast of the actual 
condition with the Divine Model of the Jewish State, that 
penetrated his soul till it pierced it : the contradiction to 
fundamental principles — the transgression of acknowledged 
precepts. And in this respect it was the same with Savo- 
narola : he takes his stand as a Prophet upon the First 



GIROLAMO SAVONAROLA. 333 

Principles of the Oracles of God, and having faith in these, 
and clear reading of them, he holds up the Divine Law to 
the Church and to the State : he beseeches men to look at 
this picture and at that : the difference between the two to 
himself is shocking — he hopes it may be to others at least 
arousing. From the first he cannot but weep as he works : 
but the more he works the more he weeps. For he sees that 
those for whom he labours are not sensitive to their state — 
that they have got so familiar with their corruption that 
they care not to be freed from it, and even are incapable of 
sudden freedom : he cannot then lead them into Canaan — 
that generation at least must die in the wilderness. Most 
sad indeed : but, alas, it has been so from Moses downwards. 
And I think you will find that every true Reformer — every 
spiritual one — and indeed every man who has any clear 
vision of Good and Evil — has a large leaven of Grief always 
fermenting in his soul. Such men are always sad men. 
The meeting of Actual Humanity with its Ideal, this is in- 
deed melancholy to behold — nothing more melancholy for an 
earnestly religious, supersensitive soul; and it is this spirit 
so conspicuous in Savonarola, and so characteristic of him, 
that makes me so honour him as a Reformer, though I see 
so clearly his infirmities as a Teacher. 

Most useful, however, is it to dwell upon these infirmities 
of Savonarola, as they afford us the solution of much of that 
want of permanent success which compels us to place him 
in a rank so much less noble than that of our more northern 
Reformers. Savonarola's Protests were chiefly against prac- 
tical abuse — against violations of the fundamental principles 
of all Religious life : against corruptions of the times which 
were vices and crimes no less than sins. His spirit was 
stirred within him when he saw his native city wholly given 
to vanity and to vice — his native country dying daily through 
slavery and luxury combined — and the very Head and Heart 



334 GIROLAMO SAVONAROLA. 

of the Church of Christ possessed by spirits more wicked 
than any who dwelt elsewhere. He found Satan enthroned 
and worshipped in the highest seat there was or could be on 
earth : the Appointed Leaders of men both blind and base 
— neither going into the kingdom of heaven themselves, nor 
suffering those that would, except for money — and above all 
the People loving to have it so. And so his soul was stung 
into Remonstrance against this : his Christian instincts re- 
volted against such spiritual wickedness in such high places, 
and opposition to these — fierce daily conflict with these — 
consumed the whole man. And in so far as this he was 
great and good indeed. For this passionate hatred of Sin 
and irrepressible yearning after Salvation from it — this truly 
lies at the very root of every true Reformation, and may be 
taken as a test of the reality, and a measure of the hopeful- 
ness, of any Protest which is made against error. In all 
great and beneficial Revolutions hitherto, the commence- 
ment has been made by a revolt against what was 
morally wrong rather than against what was intellectually 
false. It was so in Luther's case, it being only by 
degrees that he came to some degree of mental clearness 
with regard to the articles of his Creed. And no man 
had this shrinking from the immoralities of daily life, 
and the iniquities of religious profession, more deeply than 
Savonarola : and therefore I think that he may well be 
honoured highly as one of the greatest of the Reformers 
before the Reformation. But there was wanting in Savona- 
rola the grand Creative element which was so characteristic 
of Luther's Reformation, and which must ever enter largely 
into any Revolution which strives to be permanent among 
mankind. Luther's own inward experience of what the real 
needs of the human soul are, and of what the supplies of the 
Gospel for these needs are — this was much deeper than that 
of Savonarola. And it was this which gave him his superior 



GIROLAMO SAVONAROLA. 335 

power, and which enabled him to wield such dominion over 
the minds of men. So long as men took the merely negative 
ground of inveighing against the abuses of the Church while 
they recognised its fundamental assumptions, it stood firm 
against all their reiterated attacks, and would have done so, 
if there had been none other, to this day. It was the Testi- 
mony which Luther gave out of his own heart and out of 
the Bible that Christ was the true and only Source of Sal- 
vation — of Light and Life to the soul of the sinner — the 
necessary and sufficient Deliverer of man's spirit from every 
bondage — it was this that made him Invincible, and it was 
the absence of this which made Savonarola the Victim and 
not the Victor of Rome. 

But finally; it is said that Savonarola was so much of a 
Pretender to Prophecy — so much a seer of visions and a 
dreamer of dreams — that he was in truth no Great Man at 
all, but on this account alone a scarcely sane enthusiast. I 
conclude with replying: Verily this matter of Modern In- 
spiration — how much it is a gift, how much it is a grace, 
and what else it is — is not one hastily to be pronounced 
upon. We find some of the most noble Christians of whom 
the Church bears record believing in their own most intimate 
communion with heaven. We find Wycliffe and Knox — the 
clearest, hardest-headed men — doing precisely as Savonarola 
did — predicting the End of the World and the Reformation of 
the Church from the signs of their times, and deeming the 
while that they had a special call from heaven to do so. 
And truly, if ever any times did give signs of something 
supernatural being at hand — did ever with reason stimulate 
Faith into Foresight, and Instinct into Inspiration— those 
times might Avell be the times of Savonarola: and if ever 
Prophet seemed justified in his predictions by their fulfil- 
ment, Savonarola seemed so in his, by one of the most 
remarkable and most unexpected events in all modern his- 



336 GIROLAMO SAVONAROLA. 

tory — the invasion of Italy by Charles the Eighth. But the 
fact of most importance to be considered in judging of Savo- 
narola's extraordinary spiritual pretensions is this, that they 
were no way different in kind or degree, only in direction, from 
those which were characteristic of the very Saints of the 
Church to which he belonged. The Roman Church believes 
in its own Perpetual Inspiration : and whoever has read the 
Lives of its Saints will know that every one of them has his 
vision, or his dream, or his miracle These are things which 
the Church of Rome professes to be ordinary gifts of her 
grace — continuous accompaniments of her communion. And 
herein, as it seems to me, this Church is a witness for a 
great truth — obscurely and confusedly, as almost always, 
but yet substantially — a truth which many Protestant 
Churches have too often overlooked or denied — the truth, I 
mean, that now as ever, man lives, and moves, and has his 
being in God — that the Word of God is very nigh to man — 
even in his Heart. And assuredly the New Testament does 
place the Christian Church under a Dispensation of Spiritual 
Influence not common to those without it, and does also 
make the individual's participation of such influences pro- 
portionate to the measure of his faith, and love, and obe- 
dience. The belief, therefore, of individual inspiration may 
in any case be but the intellectual misinterpretation of a 
most blessed fact — but an overstrained inference from an 
indisputable Truth — the fellowship of the Holy Ghost. 
And assuredly there can be no logical line drawn between 
the special and general communications of Divine Influence : 
it is impossible to say abstractedly, if any supernatural influ- 
ence be ever exerted on the human spirit, what influence 
that is for good may not be exercised on any spirit by the 
Father of all spirits : and it would be unbelieving to deny 
that the Christian promises include a range of blessing that 
must ever appear supernatural to the natural man. It is 



GIROLAMO SAVONAROLA. 337 

true enough, indeed, that men may easily pervert this inde- 
finiteness of the Spirit's operations to their own delusion, and 
that of others ; or they may grow to be so morbidly conscious 
of their own spiritual anatomy and circulation as to border 
so closely on the boundary line which divides between the 
sane and the insane — that their testimony concerning their 
experiences can add but little to our knowledge of the laws 
which govern the great realm of Responsible Spirit. But by 
their fruits you may know them, within the region of the 
thoroughly sound. And I believe that there are doctrines 
concerning spiritual gifts — profound and subtle relations of the 
inward and the outward man — true mysteries of the kingdom 
of God — which we might learn if we were studious, and 
which we might be much wiser and richer if we knew. 
Certainly I think that the autobiographies of the best men 
and of the wisest do testify that in a very special sense the 
Inspiration of the Almighty has given them understanding : 
that there is a power in Prayer to open the eyes of the mind 
as well as to expand the affections of the heart : and that 
many things seeming impossible to the natural man are 
possible to him who is in communion with God through 
Christ. Indeed I believe that almost any soul — a very 
ordinary soul — if only it would inspect itself earnestly awhile, 
would come to feel that it was so fearfully and wonderfully 
made that it might at any time readily become a mystery, 
and even a terror, to itself. But a soul of more than ordi- 
nary depth, communing constantly not only with the mysteries 
of its own being but also with those yet greater ones of the 
Christian Revelation — if such should come to think itself 
peculiarly privileged — specially illumined — indeed it need 
not be necessarily false, not even necessarily mistaken. The 
possibilities of spirit in any case no man knows — the least 
manifestation of it is a mystery, the greatest need not be a 
miracle : and the experience of a Christianised soul — of a 

Y 



338 GER0LA3I0 SAVONAROLA. 

soul bared to all the influences of God's special Revelations 
— who shall limit and who shall define ? Let such a soul 
retire awhile into itself — leaving outward sights and sounds 
and other men's voices and thoughts — and commune with 
itself and with its Almighty Parent — pondering well its posi- 
tive sinfulness and its possible Restoration — then truly as it 
travels into the Past and the Future — the everywhere In- 
finite — it may well seem soon that the world has dropt from 
under it, and that it has no standing place in Space or Time; 
yea, let it once feel but true communion with Him who is 
Pure Spirit — worshipping Him even but for a moment in 
spirit and in truth — and then assuredly such an one, on 
returning to his ordinary estate, will testify that he has 
been the subject of emotions which transcend expression, and 
that whether the while he has been in the body or out of 
the body, he cannot tell. And thus I conceive it may have 
been sometimes with Savonarola ; and if so, who are we that 
we should judge him ? To his Master and to ours in this 
matter especially he stands or falls : yea, and before that 
Master I believe he has stood and will stand, pardoned if 
not approved. May we be only as faithful with our many 
things as he was with his few, and then I doubt not that 
one day we shall have addressed to us that l Well-done' which 
it will be heaven to hear, and shall enter with him into the 
Joy of our Lord. 



GONZALES XIMENES. 



This evening I propose to you to consider the story of a man 
living in the same period of European history with him whom 
we last contemplated, but remarkable for qualities very differ- 
ent from his : of a man who was, indeed, in a certain sense, a 
Great Reformer, but rather of a Kingdom than of a Church ; 
no Discoverer of Truth, no Preacher of Duty — a man em- 
phatically of Action rather than of anything else : charac- 
teristically a Grand Administrator of Polity, a Great 
Governor of Men. Not at all, then, as a model of Universal 
Greatness, or of Christian Maturity — nor even as one large- 
minded or large-hearted in all ways beyond his contempora- 
ries, but specially as a specimen of strong Moral Manhood — 
of a man great by virtue of the rectitude of his Will rather 
than by the versatility of his Intellect — doing a giant's work 
during a long hot day of life, and doing it willingly and 
without weariness — loving Justice passionately and su- 
premely from youth to old age, and resolutely enduring and 
daring all things to discharge faithfully many high trusts 
committed to him; as a Man of Fidelity, of Sagacity, of 
Energy, and of Fortitude, beyond most men — of inflexible 
Integrity, and unconquerable Courage — I uphold to you 



340 GONZALES XIMENES. 

Gonzales Ximenes. And though he is a man, I at once 
acknowledge, and indeed would very emphatically beg you to 
bear in mind, far below that standard of Greatness and of 
Goodness with which I should wish you to be most familiar, 
and deficient in some graces quite distinctive of the tho- 
roughly Christian character, yet, nevertheless, I believe him 
to be one whose life we may very profitably study : for he 
assuredly possesses, in a very superior degree, some qualities 
of mind and heart in which the majority of us in this age 
seem to me lamentably deficient. For thankful as I am for 
the many privileges with which this age is favoured, and for 
many of the dispositions to which it has attained, I am also 
very deeply impressed with the conviction that our mental 
and moral texture is much less vigorous than of old — that 
the ancient spirit of Righteousness — all that may be charac- 
terised as Moral Courage and Religious Sincerity combined 
— is not strong within us; that though we are powerful 
beyond all precedent in Association, we are feeble also be- 
yond all precedent in individual character — in those qualities 
which antique story loves so much to dwell on — in Fortitude 
and Rectitude, and that Virtue which is characterised by 
Valour. 

But I dwell not on this : and shall now only ask you to 
try and put yourselves back in thought, and as much as 
possible in feeling, three centuries and more, and to trans- 
plant yourselves, as last month into Italy, so now into Spain, 
in the Fifteenth Century. Spain was then, as indeed it is in 
some measure now, the most singular country every way in 
Europe, and its people were the most strongly and the most 
strangely marked. The very land itself half Oriental in its as- 
pect — those wild mountain passes, rocky and for the most part 
barren, but spotted here and there with a rich vegetation — 
those vast Syrian wastes not of sand merely but of stones and 
of heath — the deep valleys full of fruits — the rich plains half 



GONZALES XIMENES. 341 

pasture and half corn, and the Lebanon-like hills all snow — 
those grand cities, with their great gardens all within and the 
sheer desert immediately without — those scattered palm-trees 
and wells — those figs and pomegranates — those oliveyards and 
vineyards — all speak of a land having close connexion with 
the East. And the people, too, so singularly compounded — of 
such European self-command, and such Asiatic passion : so 
independent and so turbulent: feeling no reverence for Au- 
thority, and yet no degradation under Despotism: each super- 
latively proud, and yet all practically equal. And so from of 
old : for now Spain has been seven centuries and more in the 
hands of a Mohammedan people ; a people of many gifts and 
of much culture — admirable agriculturists — marvellous manu- 
facturers — with an architecture grotesquely gorgeous, and a 
luxury prodigally profuse ; a people eminent for letters, and 
for many substantial virtues and many chivalrous graces, 
but in relation to Spain, aliens in blood, in language and in 
religion. Thus there were now, and had been for long, two 
distinct people dwelling in this half European, half Asiatic 
land, but strengthening the antipathies, rather than blend- 
ing the sympathies, of the two races. For you must remem- 
ber that the Arabs were Intruders and Masters, and the 
Spaniards natives and subjects: and you may therefore 
readily conceive what fearful struggles — what accumulating 
hatreds — were continually going on: and how two such oppo- 
site elements, always commingling but never coalescing, must 
have caused all social life to fluctuate and ferment more in 
that Peninsular portion of Europe than in any other. And 
in the time of Ximenes the enmity of eight hundred years 
had come to its height, and imparted a strength which even 
Mohammedan valour found it impossible to resist. Gradu- 
ally indeed and for long had Islamism been obliged to retreat. 
It was driven back first from Toledo to Cordova, then from 
Cordova to Seville, then from Seville to Granada — where 



342 GONZALES XLMENES. 

you know that great Conquest took place which rid the 
Spaniards of the shame and the pain of seeing the Crescent 
rule over the Cross : a shame and a pain which had so 
deeply entered into their souls, that though they thus had 
got rid of the great body of the people, they yet for long years 
to come hunted the scattered remnants from out of the rugged 
regions of the Sierra Nevada, and capturing the last, with a 
mighty indignation cast them into the sea. 

This was one element of peculiar and excessive excite- 
ment which belonged to the period of which we have to 
speak this evening, and one to which I think you can hardly 
attach too much importance in forming your judgment of 
some portions of the character of him with whom we have 
more especially to do. But there are also others. While 
these events were yet transacting, and only growing towards 
an accomplishment, another critical event had taken place, 
which greatly affected the history of Spain and of Europe. 
Ferdinand King of Aragon had married Isabella Queen of 
Castile (1469), and thus two neighbouring kingdoms were 
united into one, and by their combined powers were enabled 
to consolidate a government for each and for both, beyond all 
that otherwise would have been possible. For before this 
time there existed a state of things which it is difficult for us 
here in England even to conceive. All Europe, indeed, was 
disorderly and unsettled, and in a state of change : but 
Spain was most of all anomalous and anarchical, in conse- 
quence of that possession of it by a Foreign Race which I 
have already reminded you of, and of its being broken up 
originally into so many differently governed States. Though 
the Visigoths (as they are commonly called) who overran 
the Peninsula in the Fifth Century, established the same 
Teutonic principles and institutions in Spain as in the other 
states of Europe (of which an elective crown and a national 
council were characteristics), and through these gave a 



GONZALES XIMENES. 343 

certain coherence to the greater part of it, yet they left much 
of it without any fixed constitution. And the eruptions of 
the Saracens in the Eighth Century broke up even the best 
constituted portions into numerous independent, and even 
hostile, States. And then you will readily understand how 
throughout the long period of seven centuries there must 
have been continual conflicts between the Spanish and the 
Moorish races, and how the small independent States I have 
mentioned gathered round their own nobility as leaders, in 
endeavouring to recover continually fresh portions of their 
lands and their liberties ; and how thus, in proportion to their 
efforts and success, each of such States cherished its own 
hard-won acquisitions, and formed for itself as it were an 
almost distinctive history — thus rendering union continually 
more difficult the longer they remained disunited. It is true 
that Aragon and Castile were always pre-eminent among 
these powers (indeed the only ones which could be called 
kingdoms), and progressively comprehended more and more the 
subordinate states or proprietaries. But even these two were 
very different from each other, and nothing perhaps but the 
constant pressure on both of them of a most alien and power- 
ful people, and the happy opportunity of uniting the crowns 
in the joint hands of a Husband and a Wife — and these two 
among the very ablest persons of their times — could have 
made them coalesce and consolidate as soon as they did into 
one strong Rule. 

But thus under Ferdinand and Isabella did commence a 
new era in the history of Spain — a new era of enterprise 
against the Foreign Intruders on European soil, and of in- 
ternal order and constitutional government. And I might 
say also that under them commenced a new era of European 
history, and of the world's history. For these sovereigns 
were among the first to engage largely in Foreign Policy — 
to make alliances of offence and defence — with other inde- 



344 GONZALES XIMENES. 

pendent states, and to make all Europe feel their existence 
and their power. And then, too, I am sure you will not 
have forgotten, it was under Ferdinand and Isabella that 
Columbus added a new world to the old, and that under them 
all those remarkable acquisitions in this new world which 
rapidly raised Spain to the primacy among the nations of 
Europe, had their origin and early development. Truly these 
Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries which we have had to deal 
with so often already were times of general though gradual 
Revolution throughout all the kingdoms of Europe : a quite 
new epoch in Modern History — new forces developing them- 
selves in many places simultaneously, and old ones seeming 
as simultaneously exhausted. Not only was there every- 
where the rapid decay of the old feudal and chivalrous insti- 
tutions, and the sudden revival of the still older Grecian and 
Roman Literatures — not only the Diffusion of Truth by 
Printing and Preaching which was so conspicuously instru- 
mental in causing that Revolution which we call the Refor- 
mation — but also there were other kinds of Revolutions 
going on, without sudden convulsions, but not however 
without manifold struggles — revolutions tending to destroy 
arbitrary power of all kinds, and to establish constitutional 
governments — to recognise more distinctly the interests of 
the governed and the responsibility of the governor — to give 
Law an ascendancy over Force and Diplomacy over War — 
and to found such a system of international communication 
and dependence as to render Europe a great connected 
whole. 

Now these things, and such as these, I must not dwell on 
longer, but I may and must beg you to bear them in mind 
attentively, because without some distinct consideration of 
them you will not be able to form a just judgment of the 
characteristic Greatness of him whose story I now proceed to 
lay before you. 



GONZALES XIMENES. 345 

Into the midst of the Fifteenth Century Ximenes was 
born : at Tordelaguna, in the kingdom of Castile, in the year 
1436. He was of an ancient but decayed family of De Cis- 
neros, in Leon : his father holding the office of a collector of 
the royal dues in his native town. But from earliest youth 
both his parents and himself seem to have been anxious 
about his education ; for when we first read of him we find 
him at the age of fourteen at the University of Salamanca, 
having already passed through the grammar school of Alcala ; 
and at the end of six years more receiving from that Univer- 
sity — then and for long the most celebrated in Spain — a 
Degree both in Civil and in Canon law, which was an unusual 
honour. And this union of the secular and ecclesiastic 
which we see so early in him, singularly enough runs through 
all his life, so that it is often most difficult to declare which 
is most characteristic of him, the Statesman or the Church- 
man. Under these combined influences, at the age of twenty- 
three, he leaves home and goes to Rome, which was and is of 
all places on earth that in which these two provinces are 
most completely blended. And here, too, he does not give 
himself up wholly to either, but to both : for he first prac- 
tises with zeal and success in the ecclesiastical law-courts, 
and then gets sacred orders, though without secular cure. 
So prosperously does he fare here, being much employed 
in Spanish causes, that when he is recalled to his home 
at the age of twenty-nine (in consequence of the death 
of his father and subsequent family embarrassments) he 
gets given to him by the Pope an Expectative — a 
Brief entitling him to the first vacant benefice under a cer- 
tain value which should become vacant in his native pro- 
vince. It may seem, indeed, somewhat strange that the Pope 
should have this power; and so indeed it was. But this 
power he had possessed now for some long time : and, indeed, 
until his pretensions were resisted by Ferdinand and Isabella, 



346 GONZALES XIMENES. 

he claimed and exercised the right of presenting also to most 
of the Bishoprics of Spain. A concordat with Pope Sixtus 
IV., however, reclaimed for Spain the nomination to the 
higher benefices, but all others remained his. It will not, 
however, be expected, I think, that Ximenes should now be 
the person to resist, or even to question, this right of the 
Papal see : and he does not do so : but after waiting seven 
years, which he spends in unobtrusive study, and manifold 
self-culture, a benefice corresponding to the definitions of his 
Brief falls vacant — that of Uzeda, in the diocese of Toledo. 
Ximenes forthwith, on the authority of his Brief, proceeds to 
take possession of it. But the Archbishop (Carillo, a re- 
markably arbitrary and determined old man) resists the title 
of the Pope to give away the benefice, and claims the pre- 
sentation for himself. Ximenes tells the Archbishop that he 
shall stand upon the title of the Pope, come what will. The 
Archbishop threatens Ximenes with imprisonment if he pro- 
ceeds to take possession : Ximenes does proceed to take 
possession. The Archbishop is as good as his word and 
imprisons Ximenes. Ximenes, too, is as good as his word, 
and goes to prison : and from time to time when he is in- 
quired of as to the matter, he only intimates that he intends 
to do as he said at first— to stand on his title — to allow no 
prerogative of the Pope to suffer through his unwillingness 
to suffer. The Archbishop removes him to a more rigorous 
place of confinement, and from time to time, from year to 
year — for so long does the determination of both parties hold 
out — inquires into his state. Ximenes expresses neither 
hope nor fear: he acknowledges the power of the Arch- 
bishop, but is content to oppose to it what he believes to be 
his own right. And so for six years Ximenes thus passively 
endures, and by endurance at length conquers. For the 
Archbishop, all wilful as he was, is now quite awed by this 
man's inflexibility •, he had found in him, what before he did 



GONZALES XIMENES. 347 

not believe to exist, a will stronger than his own, and con- 
tinuing to struggle, he as the weaker is consequently sub- 
dued. And so he installs Ximenes in his benefice with all 
its dues. Ximenes displays no trace of triumph : but when 
he has occupied it sufficiently long to vindicate his full right 
to all connected with it, with great amenity, begs permission 
to exchange it for the chaplaincy of Siguenza, which is 
offered him in the diocese of the great Cardinal Mendoza. 
Here he gives himself up to further prosecution of the study 
of Hebrew and Crr'dee which he had begun in his imprison- 
ment. But Mendoza was a man of too keen sight not to 
perceive that Ximenes was fitted to be something more than 
a scholar, and of too practical a nature not to avail himself 
of such superior gifts ; so he makes hiin the Grand Vicar of 
his diocese. 

But at this time of his life Ximenes has hardly become 
assured of his calling or of his powers. He is in a certain 
sense in a state of Doubt : not at all, however, in that kind 
of doubt which we have seen several other of our Great Men 
to have been in at some period of their lives, before they 
entered upon their characteristic career — a period of tumultu- 
ous heart-ache in which the mysteries of their own being, 
and of man's life altogether, became so disquieting to them 
as to make them desire to flee this world, and betake them- 
selves to the austerities of Thought and Life until they could 
get something of them solved. Nothing of the kind with 
Ximenes was it. Perhaps there never was a man of his mark 
who was less troubled with a sense of Mystery, or with any 
of the doubts of speculation. He was altogether a practical 
man, a man taken up with doing his own duty, not at all 
with thinking about what Man's duty in general might be. 
You must bear this in mind throughout ; for it is altogether 
distinctive of him, and also of a considerable class of minds 
who have taken a large share in the world's history. It 



348 GONZALES XIMENES. 

is most true that Ximenes was a most conscientious man 
— herein lies his strength — but his conscience was to 
him as an instinct, it never was much cultivated or en- 
lightened by his intellect or by his affections. Ximenes 
was, too, a devout man : but he was not a contemplative 
one. His highest notion of Religion was Worship by 
Obedience, not Communion through Knowledge and through 
Love. Ximenes was indeed often — always — engaged in 
spiritual struggles : but they were all with the merely im- 
moral portions of his nature : the victories he strove for were, 
as far as I can judge, chiefly over his passions. The sub- 
jection of his lower faculties to his higher — the subjugation of 
his own "Will to what he believed to be the Will of God — 
this is what he continually laboured for. And for this were 
appropriate acts of Devotion and of Duty, not of Meditation 
and of Study. Discipline, in fact, and not Doctrine, was to 
him the need of life and the means of grace. And for this 
he begins to find his new office a hindrance. He sees plainly 
enough that he is now getting more and more drawn into 
all kinds of minute businesses in this new situation of his, 
with little spiritual profit to any one, and a good deal of 
spiritual loss to himself : and that of worldly profit to him- 
self, there is more than he wants, and more than is good for 
him : and so he will at once throw it up and become a Monk, 
as did Luther, you know, and Savonarola. He will become 
a real monk too, not a mere pretence of one ; he will enrol 
himself among the Observantines of the Order of St Francis, 
the most rigid of all the monastic societies then existing. 
So he resigns his preferments, which amounted to two thou- 
sand ducats a year (perhaps three thousand pounds of our 
money) and enters as brother Francis into the convent of St 
John of Toledo, just founded by Ferdinand and Isabella. 
Here he at first lives secluded enough, but his previous re- 
putation and his personal gifts after a while attract so many 



GONZALES XIMENES. 349 

to his confessional, and involve him in so much of his old 
kind of business, that he requests of his superior to be al- 
lowed to retire to a forest hermitage in the neighbourhood : 
and being allowed to do so, he here spends three years in 
study and self-discipline. His superior, however, allows 
him no more than this, but then sends him to the convent of 
Salfeda, and of this he is soon made Guardian. He now 
lives again some years quietly, improving the Society in 
discipline as well as himself: and while so living and doing 
(in 1492) receives a summons from his old friend Cardinal 
Mendoza to repair to Valladolid. The reason of this is, that 
the office of the Queen's Confessor having become vacant, the 
Queen has applied to the Cardinal to recommend a successor: 
and the Cardinal cannot forget Ximencs — cannot but recom- 
mend him. And so Ximenes goes to the capital, not know- 
ing, however, what is to befall him there. He is ushered 
unawares into the Queen's presence, and exhibits such com- 
plete self-possession and thorough dignity, that the Queen 
recognises in him precisely the person she wants, and he is 
at once invited to fill the office. Ximenes for some time 
earnestly declines the appointment, and finally accepts it 
only on condition that he should be allowed to live as a 
Monk when he was not wanted as a Confessor. And on his 
first appearance in his official capacity the Court generally 
seems agreed that they had never had such a man among 
them before : a man, as it seemed to them, too coarsely clad, 
and too often preaching Repentance like a Prophet rather than 
prophesying smooth things like a courtier. And truly one 
who saw him at the annual festival of the Corpus Christi at 
Medina del Campo soon after his appointment, walking in 
the procession there, does present us with such a picture of 
extreme contrast between him, the bare-footed friar, and his 
friend the magnificent Cardinal, that we can well understand 
how Ximenes should be to those dainty courtiers for a Sign 
and a Wonder. 



350 GONZALES XIMENES. 

And now for two years he is occupied pretty equally 
between Court and Convent, when he is appointed Pro- 
vincial of his order in Castile. This additional duty gives 
him the opportunity of retiring more from Court, and 
obliges him to inspect the Convents of his province. And 
to this he now gives himself up more particularly, travel- 
ling on foot and living on alms which he begs by the 
way. The state that he finds these Convents in is wholly 
unsatisfactory to him, and so he reports ill of them to 
the Queen, and she gets a Bull for the Reformation of 
them from the Pope, which Ximenes executes untiringly. 
While thus actively employed his friend the Cardinal Arch- 
bishop dies (1495), and thus there becomes vacant the most 
considerable ecclesiastical dignity in Christendom, after that 
of the Papal Throne. It had great political influence con- 
nected with it, and its revenue amounted to as much perhaps 
as in our money would be a Hundred Thousand Pounds 
a-year. It was absolutely in the gift of the Queen of Cas- 
tile, and she who was now that Queen was most scrupulously 
conscientious in all her appointments, especially in those 
which were ecclesiastical : indeed, the use which both Ferdi- 
nand and Isabella made of their Patronage, and the manner 
in which they opened the very highest offices of their king- 
doms to men of worth and ability, is one of the most notable 
and noble characteristics of their sovereignty. In this in- 
stance Isabella goes to the bed-side of the dying Archbishop 
and earnestly begs his advice as to his successor. He 
recommends Ximenes. The Queen, knowing the kind of 
person she has to do with in her Confessor, makes no men- 
tion to him of her intentions until she has procured a Brief 
from the Pope confirming her appointment. The moment 
this arrives, she put it herself into the hands of her Con- 
fessor. Ximenes reading the superscription, which instantly 
reveals to him his position, refuses to open it, says, ' There 



GONZALES XIMENES. 351 

is some mistake here,' drops the packet on the ground, and 
abruptly leaves the presence of the Queen. And also the 
city : for when the messengers of the Queen go to recall him 
to her presence, they find him not before he is far on his 
way to a distant convent. He is persuaded to return to the 
Queen, but no arguments or entreaties can persuade him to 
accept the Archbishopric. For six whole months Ximenes 
holds out — at the end of which time a Rescript comes to him 
from the Pope, making it a matter of ecclesiastical obedience 
for him to comply with the united wishes of his spiritual 
and temporal sovereigns. So at sixty Ximenes finds him- 
self Archbishop of Toledo — against his will as it would seem 
sincerely — assuredly without his seeking. Not indeed that 
Power was ever displeasing to Ximenes — far enough from 
this — but he considered it so much a Trust — so entirely, I 
may say, as a solemn responsibility — that he could never 
count it as an indulgence, but only meet it as a duty. 

And now let us look for a moment at what kind of figure 
that is which has stepped up upon this lofty pedestal, and 
stands thus observed henceforth of all observers of European 
History. A very tall and wholly erect figure, in a friar's 
frock and barefoot : stern and sombre : thoroughly monastic. 
His complexion sallow, his whole countenance thin and 
sharp ; with a high and long head — shorn, all save a narrow 
circle of it : with small, black, vivid eyes ; with overhanging 
brows, and a most ample and unwrinkled but retiring fore- 
head : his nose prominent and very aquiline, and his upper 
lip projecting over his lower ; with a voice harsh and grating, 
but of most effective speech, as of fire mingled with hail — 
not always blessing, but always leaving some traces of itself 
for long. Clearly a most penetrating, sagacious, determined 
man : rigidly calm, sternly-disciplined : every way imposing. 
in no way attractive ; a Priest and not a Prophet, and more 
an Archbishop than an Apostle. 



352 GONZALES XIMENES. 

Such appears, from the Portraits we have of him, to be the 
kind of man who finds himself, without his seeking it, the 
Archbishop of Toledo in 1495. I have said, I think he sin- 
cerely tried to avoid the elevation. That this was the real 
state of the case I think you will see throughout his whole 
life ; and the very first instance of his use of his great power 
illustrates it. It was this: Cardinal Mendoza's younger 
brother held a most valuable governorship of a town under 
the late Archbishop of Toledo : and now his friends come 
flocking round the new one to get the appointment renewed, 
reminding him of how many obligations he owed to the 
Cardinal — how even he owed his very archbishopric to him 
— and confirming many other similar arguments by laying 
before him a written recommendation from the Court. 
Ximenes replies : l The Sovereigns may send me back again 
to the Cloister if they please, but no personal considerations 
shall ever influence me in distributing the Patronage of my 
See.' When all is quiet again, and no one either begging or 
complaining, he gives the place, with even a graceful cheer- 
fulness, to him to whom he had denied it before. And not 
only is there this same severity of principle maintained, but 
also the same simplicity of living. He will have no more 
servants than he had before, will wear his Franciscan habit, 
and will journey always as heretofore on foot, and barefoot. 

These things, and the like, however, are represented to the 
Pope, and draw from him an admonition to greater compli- 
ance with the dignities of his station. Ximenes so far obeys 
that he henceforth appears always officially as the Arch- 
bishops had done before him, but he lives privately precisely 
as he ever had done. He has luxuries at his table for 
others, friar's fare only for himself. He wears outwardly 
purple and fine linen, inwardly he is clothed in cloth of hair : 
with abounding attendants he yet mends his own clothes, 
and sleeps in magnificent chambers upon a wooden couch. 



GONZALES XIMENES. 353 

He endeavours now to reform his clergy as he had done his 
monastic brethren: and he begins at home — with his own 
brother. To this brother (Bernardin) he had given much of 
what he gave up when he became a monk, and had after- 
wards taken him to live with him. He was, however, an 
irreligious man, and a lover of pleasure more than of duty : 
and so Ximenes rebukes him, and threatens him with his 
further public notice. On this Bernardin joins with some 
others whom Ximenes had similarly treated, and had drawn 
up a Complaint against him to the Queen. Ximenes im- 
prisons him for two years in the Convent of Guadalfara. 

He now reforms his own Convent of Toledo — Augustines. 
They send a messenger to complain to the Pope : the mes- 
senger finds himself arrested by Ximenes' order the moment 
he sets his foot in Rome, and nothing comes of their opposi- 
tion. He confiscates the property of the brethren of his own 
Order (Franciscans) for public uses — as their vows rendered 
it inconsistent for them to hold any. A thousand Of them 
emigrate, and carry complaints of Ximenes far and wide. 
The General of the Order comes from Rome — full to over- 
flowing with indignation — to counteract the proceedings of 
his Provincial, in 1496. He demands, rather than requests, 
an audience of the Queen, and after much fervent speech 
against Ximenes, admonishes her, as she values the interests 
of her soul, to remove Ximenes from his office. This the 
Queen does not do. The General returns to Italy, and there 
obtains from the Pope a Commission of Conventuals to be 
associated with Ximenes in all his proceedings respecting the 
Order. The Commissioners arrive in due form, but Ximenes 
takes but little notice of them. They complain to the Pope, 
and he, with the advice of the Cardinals, issues a brief pro- 
hibiting the Sovereigns from proceeding any further, until 
the whole matter has been thoroughly examined into by 
them. The Queen, on receiving this communication, instantly 



354 GONZALES XIMENES. 

sends it to Ximenes. He exhorts her to take the least pos- 
sible notice of it : but to be firm, and not give up the good 
work which they had begun. Fresh negotiations go on with 
Rome — Ximenes going on the while exactly as before. 
These negotiations, after multiplied difficulties and delays, 
terminate, not as it was supposed they would do, in removing 
Ximenes, but in procuring for him powers by which he 
thoroughly effects the reforms which he from the first con- 
templated, and is enabled to extend them to other Orders 
besides his own, and even to the morals of the secular 
clergy. And thus he effected in Spain a Reformation of Dis- 
cipline which, had it been general throughout the Roman 
Church, might have indefinitely postponed that Reformation 
of Doctrine which in the next century made half Europe 
Protestant. 

In 1499 Ximenes is summoned to attend Ferdinand and 
Isabella in their visit to their new conquest of Granada : and 
here the question of the possible conversion of the Moors 
naturally arises. Ximenes takes counsel concerning it with 
the good Archbishop of the city. This man was one of 
the best bishops whom we meet with in all Spanish history : 
and he for some years had been trying to evangelise the 
Mussulman inhabitants of his diocese, by translating into 
Arabic portions of the Gospels and of the Liturgy : and old 
as he was, had even learned Arabic himself, and ordered his 
clergy to do so, in order to hold conversations with the 
Moors and to preach to them. But this kind of missionary 
work was too slow in its effects for Ximenes : and so he 
now calls together the whole body of Mussulman doctors to 
a Conference, and tries by a mixture of methods, — all how- 
ever of the persuasive kind, at first — to represent to them the 
advantage of conversion to the Christian Faith. And a 
great outward effect certainly seems produced : but not much 
of spiritual worth is accomplished, as I should judge. 



GONZALES XIMENES. 355 

Ximenes, however, is so encouraged with his success that 
he now tries to hasten on unduly the completion of his work, 
and proceeds to try other than persuasive methods. Among 
the rest he burns all the Arabic books and manuscripts that 
he can seize upon (except medical ones) publicly in one of 
the great squares of the city — thus making the bigotry of the 
Christian Archbishop rival that of the Mohammedan General 
eight centuries gone by. But the Moors consider, and justly 
too, that these proceedings of Ximenes are contrary not only 
to Justice but also to express treaties which had been made 
with them : and so they rise against him, and surround his 
palace : and the whole city is in arms and tumult — which is 
only quelled by the good Archbishop of Granada going into 
the very thick of the Moors, unarmed, and speaking to them 
in their own tongue, as a friend and a father. And the 
noble Tendilla the governor (whose exploits are in all the 
history of this time) leaves his wife and children in their care, 
to shew the confidence he will put in their honour and good- 
will. And thus all calms down again : and Ximenes goes to 
give an account of himself to the Sovereigns. Ferdinand, 
who never liked Ximenes (especially because he had wished 
to have made his own illegitimate son Archbishop of Toledo 
in his stead) finds it hard to listen to his account of himself — 
while Ximenes with his usual courage extenuates no jot nor 
tittle of his conduct, and takes the whole responsibility un- 
reservedly on himself. And, alas, so little is he either dis- 
couraged by his ill success, or enlightened by it, that he 
does not cease to urge the further use of measures similar 
to those which he had already employed. And after a time 
he does so work on the Sovereigns that measures of the 
severest kind, enforcing either expulsion or conversion, are 
taken in consequence of this Insurrection: which, however, do 
end (as Ximenes meant that they should do) in extirpating 
Mohammedanism throughout Spain, or at least by abolishing 



356 GONZALES XIMENES. 

the broad line of demarcation hitherto existing between the 
Spanish and Arab population. How little, however, these 
severe measures were repugnant to the ordinary feelings of 
the most cultivated and the most benevolent men of the time, 
we have abundant evidence : and you may judge perhaps 
sufficiently from the fact that the good Archbishop Talavera 
— whose reasonable and truly Christian plans were super- 
seded by those of Ximenes, and who loved the Moors, too, 
as w r e may guess from that saying of his, ' Moorish works 
and Spanish faith are all that are wanting to make a good 
Christian ' — this man declared that Ximenes had done best 
of all : that he had achieved greater triumphs over the 
Moors than even Ferdinand and Isabella, inasmuch as they 
had conquered only the soil, while he had conquered the souls 
of Granada. 

But now Ximenes gives himself up to better, work than 
this. For some years past he has been revolving it well in 
his mind that the clergy of Spain ought to be better edu- 
cated, and that he may enable them to become so : and that 
there are two things which would greatly conduce to the 
object: the first is, the foundation of an extensive University 
which should be provided with Professors from all countries 
— the most able that can be met with anywhere : and the 
other, an edition of the Bible prepared from manuscripts in 
several languages. And in this year 1500 he lays the first 
stone of this projected University, at that town where he had 
spent his boyhood at School — Alcala de Henares : and you 
may judge the largeness of this man's schemes when I tell you 
that when Francis I. visited Alcala a few years after the death 
of Ximenes, he said, l Gonzales Ximenes has executed more 
than I should have dared to conceive : he has done with his 
single hand what in France it would have cost a line of Kings 
to have accomplished.' And in truth it would have been a 
work worthy of an ordinary man's lifetime to establish such 



GONZALES XIMEXES. 357 

a foundation as this. I cannot indeed lay before you the 
detail, or even the outline, of the whole, but you may judge 
of the scale of it when I tell you that when it was first 
opened it consisted of Ten Colleges for the residence of stu- 
dents, and an Hospital ; with a library, a chapel and a refec- 
tory to each college, all furnished not only with a sufficiency 
for present need, but with a becoming splendour : and every- 
thing to the minutest detail was mentally the work of 
Ximenes. He founded forty Professorships : 12 of which 
were dedicated to Theology and Canon Law : 14 to Gram- 
mar, Rhetoric, and the ancient Classics : 4 to Medicine : 8 
to Logic, Physics, and Metaphysics : 1 to Ethics : 1 to 
Mathematics. The Professors were chosen from all nations, 
and in order to stimulate their energies were appointed only 
for four years, though capable of reappointment : and their 
respective incomes were regulated by the number of their 
pupils. Ximenes endowed it from first to last with property 
to the amount of 15,000 ducats a-year : and on the visit of 
the French King, which I mentioned just now, it contained 
seven thousand students. 

And while his University is growing into efficiency, he 
engages in his other great work — the formation of a Poly- 
glott Bible. This was a work of great difficulty, and equal 
usefulness : and could perhaps have been done by no other 
man so well as by Ximenes, because both his character and 
his position secured him the command of all the literary 
resources of Christendom. The Vatican treasures were 
opened to him, and the aid of all the learned men of Italy, 
through his close connexion with the Pope ; and his station 
in Spain enabled him to collect and to collate immense num- 
bers of precious manuscripts of the Hebrew Scriptures which 
were in the possession of the numerous Jews then settled in 
Spain ; while the peculiar relation which existed between 
Arabia and Spain gave him great facilities with regard to 



358 GONZALES XLMEXES. 

Eastern languages. As to the liberal way in which he 
carried it on you may judge from the facts, that he imported 
printers from Germany, and had types cast in foundries 
which he erected for the purpose at Alcala : that he engaged 
men of many nations for the task — the Greek and the Latin, 
the Arab and the Jew ; and that before it was completed it 
cost him fifteen years of anxiety, and 80,000 golden crowns. 
Such are the works of this man's leisure. But leisure he 
was not much longer to have. For Queen Isabella dies in 
1504, and Ximenes, wholly unexpectedly, finds himself ap- 
pointed her executor. This was an office full of most com- 
plex cares. For on her death Ferdinand was no loDger 
Sovereign of Castile, but only of Aragon — not even Regent 
of Castile, though Ximenes would fain have him be so. 
The crown descended to Joanna, the daughter of Ferdinand 
and Isabella, who married Philip the Archduke of Austria 
and Sovereign of the Low Countries, son of the Emperor 
Maximilian. You will remember that the only remaining 
child of Ferdinand and Isabella, Dona Catalina, was married 
to two sons of our Henry VII.. and has a melancholy name 
in our history as Catherine of Aragon. Now Joanna had 
become of late mentally incompetent : and her husband 
claimed to act for her. The conflicting claims of Philip and 
Ferdinand cause much trouble, especially as Philip comes 
over to Spain personally to enforce his claims. Ferdinand, 
however, marries again (the niece of Louis XII.) and resigns 
the regency to Philip, and goes to Naples. Philip fills all 
offices of State with Flemings, and reigns wastefully and 
badly. Ximenes acts with great firmness in opposition to 
him, but also with such ability that he often controls by con- 
vincing : as you may judge by one instance of his conduct, 
when on one occasion Philip had made a royal decree which 
he deemed highly mischievous, Ximenes tore it in pieces : 
and so remonstrated with Philip as that he gave up the 



GONZALES XIMENES. 359 

measure, and all similar ones henceforth. But Philip does 
not long enjoy his regency — he dies in the September of the 
year 1506. 

And now for a time there seems thorough anarchy every- 
where but just around Ximenes, where all is orderly activity. 
The difficulty is this, that no Cortes can be legally assembled, 
because Joanna, who now has lucid intervals, will not sign 
any state paper whatsoever, and will not consequently give 
the required legal form to their assembling : Ferdinand is at 
Naples, and Maximilian claims the regency as grandfather 
of Joanna's son — that son who is known in all European 
History as Charles V. There is a nominal regency, how- 
ever, of Seven : but the practical regency soon centres all in 
Ximenes. Ximenes has now a task which really seems as 
if it might be too hard for him ; he is determined enough 
and courageous enough — with abounding promptitude and 
vigour — but his position is anomalous, and his legal powers 
insufficient. However, on one thing he is resolved — that 
there shall be no detriment to the right of Ferdinand if he 
chooses to come and claim his regency, and until it is deter- 
mined whether he will do so or not, there shall be a clear 
space kept for him round the Throne. The nobles are re- 
fractory : Ximenes raises a kind of Praetorian Cohort for the 
protection of public order : several of the grandees do the 
like for their own protection, they say : and all seems about 
to resolve itself into chaos and civil war. But Ferdinand 
now comes from Naples (June 1507), and this affords a point 
of reconciliation for all parties which is eagerly caught at, 
and for a time serves as a successful reunion of distracted 
interests. Ferdinand, indeed, for a while rules over Spain 
with less restraint than when he was the husband of its 
Queen. Ximenes, too, for a while is nearly released from his 
political cares. Ferdinand has brought him a Cardinal's 
Hat (from Pope Julius II.), and a Papal Brief for the office 



360 GONZALES XIMENES. 

of Grand Inquisitor of Spain, and he now retires to Alcala to 
prepare his University for its opening : and is for some time 
taken up with peopling it with the best Professors, and 
arranging the course of its studies, the order of its adminis- 
tration, and the details of its ceremonies. And what he 
does in this matter would have been the employment of the 
life of many, who in doing this alone would have been con- 
sidered worthy of high honour and renown. 

But not even his country — much less a college — nothing 
less than Christendom — can suffice for the large energies of 
Ximenes. So in this leisure of his at Alcala he reverts to 
an old plan he had long been working at, and finishes the 
design of it — which was to rescue Africa from the hands of 
the Mohammedans — to clear all this part of the world alto- 
gether of Eastern Intruders. Like Columbus, Ximenes had 
early formed extensive plans for the recovery of the Holy 
Sepulchre, and had endeavoured to interest the Kings of 
Portugal and of England in a new Crusade. For this pur- 
pose he had been for some time procuring careful surveys of 
the coast, and had drawn out plans of military operations. 
Indeed you should note here, and elsewhere, how much of a 
General Ximenes was : as he himself said, enjoying military 
manoeuvres always much more than ecclesiastical ceremonies. 
But now, however, he can get up no Crusade on a large 
scale. But he does on a small one : for he himself fits out 
an expedition against the Moors on the Barbary coast, and 
is successful in it : and then he submits a plan to Ferdinand 
for a more formidable expedition against Oran. Ferdinand 
hesitates much, and at last refuses on the ground of the 
expense of it. Ximenes instantly offers to lend him the 
money requisite for the purpose, and volunteers to command 
it himself. The King consents, and wishes him well. So 
Ximenes raises troops, and organises the whole expedition. 
The soldiers indeed mutiny and quarrel among themselves, 



GONZALES XIMENES. 361 

and the officers are perverse and treacherous; and there 
are indescribable harassments and embarrassments. But at 
length the expedition sets out : 80 vessels, 4000 horse, and 
10,000 foot : with Ximenes at their head, in the same mili- 
tary fashion as two Popes, his contemporaries, had been in 
when they were Cardinals. Strange service you may well 
think this for an ecclesiastic : I will only say that it was not 
strange to men then. For Cardinal Legates fought on oppo- 
site sides in the battle of Ravenna, so late as 1512 — one of 
whom was afterwards Pope Leo X. And in forming your 
judgment about this you must at least remember that the 
Archbishops of Toledo had for centuries before led armies 
against the Moors, and that after the time of Ximenes they 
did so still : that they were immense proprietors of lands and 
of cities, and as such owed the same kind of feudal service to 
the State that other nobles did : and that the whole system 
of the Roman Polity is such as sanctions the blending of the 
ecclesiastical with the secular to a greater degree than we 
Protestants are at all accustomed to. Indeed it was Pro- 
testantism that first rent them asunder. But, however, we 
are concerned now only to say that they disembark on the 
African shore in perfect order, and take Oran by storm. 

And now Ximenes endeavours to order his conquest, as he 
had done his march } solemnly and ecclesiastically. With 
him the war was a specially Religious one; engaged in by 
him with no selfish view whatsoever, at his great personal 
trouble and expense. He deemed himself as Joshua and the 
Moors as Canaanites — save only that they had the alterna- 
tive of conversion if they preferred it to migration. He pays 
his army liberally and regularly, and tries to impress them 
with the sacredness of their cause ; but his army had few in 
it such as he : they would almost to a man have preferred 
unlimited plunder to the most liberal pay, and the licence of 
the time to any improvement on it. And so he can do no 



362 GONZALES XIMENES. 

good with them, he finds, in any Religious war : they are 
not Ironsides. And Ferdinand too, he discovers, is secretly 
acting to his prejudice in correspondence with his General, 
Navarro. So he returns to Spain. All possible honours of 
a triumph are offered him as he returns to Valladolid. Bur 
Ximenes has no particle of vanity in him — has no wish to 
be distinguished from others but by doing more work than 
they, and when that work has been done, no wish to live on 
the reputation of it ; and so he declines all show of this kind, 
save, indeed, that on his entrance to Alcala (whither he now 
retires) he allows a half-academic, half-ecclesiastical cere- 
mony, to celebrate his entrance into that University which 
was so wholly his, and which he had selected for his Home. 
And so now he is preceded on his entrance here by captive 
Moors, camels bearing gold and silver, Arabic volumes on 
Astrology and Physic, the keys of Oran, the candlesticks oi 
the Mosques, and red Moorish standards with their azure 
crescents. 

And here at Alcala — in academic halls — for some years 
he lives, endeavouring to make some Christian use of his 
conquest — to colonise Oran with Spaniards, and to garrison 
it with a military and religious Order similar to that which 
held Rhodes — the Order of St John of Jerusalem. But on 
this point, and on others connected with the expedition, 
serious differences arise between him and Ferdinand, who 
you will remember never liked his Cardinal Archbishop. 
Much continues for long to be said on both sides, little to be 
done; and Ximenes' chief interest and exercise now for 
years is the improvement of his University, and the comple- 
tion of that Polyglott of his which is still of high renown in 
Christendom, and is called the Complutensian — because 
Complutum was the old Roman name for Alcala. He still, 
however, all the while takes an ordinary share in the ordi- 
nary politics of the time, but this is not full employment for 



GONZALES XIMENES. 363 

such as he. And one thing we read of his doing now, which 
is worth the noticing, which is this : When Leo X. sends 
forth those Bulls of Indulgence which we meet with so con- 
spicuously in the history of Luther, and which were sent to 
he sold in other countries as well as in Germany, Ximenes 
will not allow one of them to be bought in Spain. 

But in January 1516, when Ximenes is eighty, Ferdinand 
is sick unto death ; and dying he says, both by words and in 
writing, ' I leave my government in the hands of the Arch- 
bishop of Toledo : I know well indeed the austere humour of 
the man — his stubborn will — his incapacity for yielding : but 
he is a faithful man — with right intentions always — incapa- 
ble of doing or tolerating injustice — the public good his only 
aim. During the absence of my grandson Charles, I leave 
Ximenes Vicegerent of Spain.' So Ferdinand dying, Ximenes 
finds himself — without seeking it, but I do not say without 
liking it — the Regent of Spain. This was to him the open- 
ing of a great field for action, and though worn as he is 
already with work and fourscore years, he seems only to 
imbibe fresh vigour with fresh duty. 

And in the very outset of his Regency he has to settle his 
title to it. It is contended that Ferdinand being but Regent 
himself had no right to appoint a Regent as successor to 
himself. But then again neither has Prince Charles, who 
being only sixteen years old is not yet king. Charles, how- 
ever, does appoint as such Adrian, his Tutor, Dean of Lou- 
vain now, but afterwards Pope Adrian VI. The country, 
however, having had already so much disquiet, Ximenes is 
unwilling that it should suffer more from disputed authority, 
and so he arranges with Adrian that they are both to govern 
with joint and equal authority. They do so nominally : but 
it turns out that Ximenes has practically the larger share. 
And his first act is to proclaim Charles King in the streets 
of Madrid, and to constitute this the capital city of all Spain — 



.364 GONZALES XIMENES. 

thus changing many things in accordance with his proposed 
change of policy. He now instantly begins with measures 
of Reform upon the largest scale, each one of them great 
events in the history of those times, but which I can only 
speak of very briefly. And first I must tell you that these 
measures of Ximenes, though approved by Charles, are most 
determinately opposed by the nobles, and are the cause of 
most formidable conspiracies by them against him. These 
nobles whom I have mentioned so often, were most consider- 
able persons for opponents, as you may judge by the fact 
that the Duke of Medina Sidonia could raise an army out of 
his own vassals of twenty thousand men : and the Duke of 
Infantado could do even more. The Marquis of Villena and 
the Duke of Medina Celi had each estates extending for at 
least a hundred miles : and many more had incomes of from 
fifty to a hundred thousand Pounds a year. The chief of 
these nobles now wait upon Ximenes, and demand the Cre- 
dentials on the strength of which he thus ventures to rule 
them. Ximenes makes answer sufficient for the time, and 
then instantly forms and executes a plan for resisting their 
power which is perhaps the most important act of his states- 
manship. This plan is to establish what now is called a 
National Guard — or Militia — a citizen military force — thus 
calling on the Middle Class of the people to take a position 
in the powers of the state such as they had never held be- 
fore, and which would be a considerable counteraction to the 
irregular powers of the nobles. He had once laid the scheme 
before Ferdinand, but he would not listen to it : he now pro- 
poses it by letter to Charles : but with his usual promptitude 
and determination, he sets about the execution of it before 
lie receives an answer. He issues a Proclamation to several 
cities, offering many privileges and exemptions to all their 
citizens of a certain class who before a certain date shall 
arm themselves, and enrol themselves in a National Guard 



GONZALES XIMENES. 365 

— a body of men whom the Government, he says, will delight 
to honour, and who will have it for their duty to defend 
their country from all foreign and domestic enemies. The 
offer is accepted with so much readiness that in a few months 
30,000 citizens are enrolled, equipped and in training. Al- 
most all the nobles, however, and some of the cities (espe- 
cially in Old Castile — Valladolid and Burgos — from which 
cities you will remember Ximenes had transferred the centre 
of government to Madrid) hate the scheme, and its author. 
And so, after much petty opposition, they combine to raise 
an army against the Regent, as they say, not against the 
King. They, however, declare that if the whole matter is 
fairly referred to Charles, they will abide by an unequivocal 
declaration of his will, but that they will not submit to the 
will of Ximenes without this. So they send to Charles : 
Charles sanctions the plan of Ximenes, and the refractory 
submit. Ximenes does not inflict any testimony of his dis- 
pleasure on his opponents, but in order further to counteract 
the inordinate and irregular power of the nobles, he appoints 
four popular magistrates who should be a kind of Tribunes 
of the people — watching over their interests, and reporting 
the proceedings of the nobles to the king. 

Ximenes all this while has been also attending to his 
country's sea-service, and to the affairs of the New World. 
He establishes arsenals on the southern coast, and equips a 
fleet against the Barbary pirates. Barbarossa, too, had 
roused up the African Mohammedans, in the name of Re- 
ligion and their Prophet, to throw off the rule of the Chris- 
tians : and had made himself master of Algiers and deposed 
the King of Tunis ; who sends to Ximenes for help. Ximenes 
sends some troops : but these were hastily levied, and by no 
means of a good quality : and are utterly defeated by Bar- 
barossa before the gates of Algiers, Ximenes bears the re- 
verse with equanimity. And Jean D' Albert (whose wife 



366 GONZALES XIMENES. 

you will recollect was Queen of Navarre, Catherine) now 
attempts, with some favour from the people, to recover Na- 
varre, which Ferdinand had conquered from him. Ximenes 
defends it successfully, and demolishes all its fortresses. 
Malaga, too, having revolted, and the Admiral of Castile, 
whose duty it was to control it, being unable to do so, applies 
to Ximenes for help. Ximenes supports him — though his 
political adversary — promptly and vigorously : and reduces 
it, not with the regular forces, but with his militia — which 
is a great triumph in many ways for Ximenes. 

And as I have said, he is engaged with the New World 
too. Don Diego Columbus, the son of Christopher Columbus 
whom we know of, has been for some time laying his case 
of recall from the Government of Hispaniola before the 
authorities. Ximenes takes the matter into his own hands, 
and sends out a Commission to examine into the facts on the 
spot ; and what I mention this for chiefly is, to beg you to 
observe that he conjoined with this special object of inquiry, 
the outlines of an extensive investigation into the condition 
of the natives, and the means which ought to be adopted for 
their improvement, and herein declares himself forcibly and 
emphatically against all systems of Slavery. But unfortu- 
nately Charles (who was in Flanders you must remember, 
and acted in this as in everything without concert with 
Ximenes) had already given permission to the planters of 
the sugar-cane there (who complained to him that the island 
natives were too weak for the labour) to transport to the 
Islands African slaves — as the Portuguese had been for 
some time in the habit of doing. And this was the origin 
of that awful Trade which has been going on from that time 
to this — as a curse on Christendom and a libel on Humanity. 
Ximenes foresaw something of the evil that would come of 
it — no prophet could have foreseen half — and entered an 



GONZALES XIMENES. 367 

earnest protest against the weak beginnings of it. All 
honour be to him for this. 

But all these undertakings — especially his militia estab- 
lishment — bring with them other pressing business to take 
heed to — that of Finance. And not only is there his militia, 
but he has already substituted a standing army, dependent 
on the government, for the old practice of the government 
being dependent on the feudal service of the nobles. And to 
meet the public wants he now adopts the boldest measure 
perhaps ever adopted by any ruler not professedly or con- 
fessedly despotic. He reclaims all the lands given to the 
Military noble Orders, overruling all the grants — whether by 
papal bull or royal gift — wheresoever their funds were not 
being employed, or had not for long been employed, as the 
conditions of their original grants required. I should tell 
you with regard to these Military Orders, that there were 
several of them : the most prominent of them being that of 
St Jago (or St James) of Compostella — the Patron Saint of 
Spain. These were originally incorporated in order to main- 
tain perpetual war upon the Mussulman — they observed the 
Eule of St Augustin. And perhaps the next to these were 
the Knights of Calatrava, who took up a particular service 
which had been deserted by the Templars — they observed 
the Rule of St Benedict. To these Orders had been given 
immense possessions, indeed almost all that they had con- 
quered from the Moors. And at length these possessions 
became quite royal — and super-royal — while, when the Moors 
were driven out of Spain, their duties dwindled actually into 
nothing. 

How great a disturbance this measure would cause among 
the nobles you may easily imagine from considering the fact, 
that all pretence of keeping up the forms even of compliance 
with these conditions had been long since laid aside, and the 



368 GONZALES XIMENES. 

Orders had distributed their estates in pensions and sinecures 
among a large number of their nobles. And such hardy 
innovation does stir up the spirit of the grandees. They 
send vehement remonstrances into Flanders — which, however, 
sound more faint when they have travelled over so long a 
space. Ximenes, loving Justice and hating Covetousness, 
willingly offers to Charles and his council the presentation to 
many lucrative appointments in his own right, if his new 
regime be confirmed; and at the same time most earnestly 
begs Charles to come over to Spain to judge for himself how 
he has discharged his stewardship. Charles resolves to do 
so, and sends back word to Ximenes that he will.* And now 
begins a series of intrigues against Ximenes, by the Flemish 
courtiers of Charles and by the nobles of Spain, most harass- 
ing to Ximenes and most difficult for me to explain to you. 
They first send over a kind of co-regent for Ximenes and the 
cypher Adrian, who you may perhaps have forgotten has 
been all this time officially the colleague and co-equal of 
Ximenes. On his arrival Ximenes receives him with all 
necessary formal courtesy, but proceeds with his government 
precisely as before. Remonstrances are made to Charles, 
and a third colleague is sent for Ximenes — a Dutchman 
with whose name, however, I need not trouble you, as he is 
reduced immediately to the position of his predecessors. The 
Flemish Councillors are trebly indignant : but it would seem 
that Charles rather admired than resented the indomitable 
superiority of his Regent. The Flemings, however, now 
counsel Charles to send over his brother Ferdinand, to whom 
they think Ximenes must submit ; but while they are thus 
counselling, a communication comes from Ximenes request- 
ing still ampler powers than he has, and adding, that should 
these not be granted he must beg permission to retire to his 
diocese, and leave the government of the state in other 
hands. All are alarmed at this, for only now they become 



GONZALES XIMENES. 369 

aware of the greatness of the man with whom they had to 
do — how much stronger his aged hands are than all younger 
ones together, and what a blank would he left in the wide 
dominions of Charles if that one old man should be with- 
drawn. They reply that Charles will journey into Spain, 
and they ask Ximenes to remit large sums for the prepara- 
tions necessary for the undertaking. So many remittances 
of the like kind had been already sent and wasted, that it is 
now a difficult matter to raise others : but Ximenes is so en- 
tirely the man to overcome difficulties and to make sacrifices 
in any cause that he deems important, that as large sums as 
were asked for are sent. But word soon comes that these 
have not been at all applied to the purposes for which they 
were asked and sent. The citizens of the principal towns — 
who had made great sacrifices and efforts to raise the money 
— get tidings of this : they break out into audible indigna- 
tion — into incipient insurrection. They demand a meeting 
of the Cortes. Ximenes, too, is stung into anger : but he is 
as calm as he is just, as politic as he is grieved. He thinks 
it right that the Cortes should meet in such case, so he 
assents to their demands, but at the same time fixes the date 
of their assembling sufficiently distant to allow of Charles's 
coming before their meeting, if he will. The people are 
pacified, and Ximenes writes this letter to Charles: — 

1 Ximenes, Regent, and the Royal Senate, to King Charles, 
Health : 

For the ancient and loyal fidelity in which towards your 
ancestors and now towards you we have been bound, it be- 
hoves us as trusty ministers and good citizens, to counsel and 
admonish what may be best for your service and that of the 
Republic. Great and exalted princes deserve power from 
God and reverence from man, as long as they govern in jus- 
tice and wisdom the people committed to them. In order to 

2a 



370 GONZALES XIMBNES. 

do this, and support such a weight, they must choose worthy 
and respectable counsellors and ministers : no one head suf- 
ficing to perform the weighty tasks of Government. For 
those hundred-handed and fabulous worthies were nothing 
other than considerate and wise kings, who chose egregious 
and honest ministers to execute their great behests. Henry 
III., your ancestor, who, on account of the continued mala- 
dies of his youth, was sick and powerless of body, was still 
not unequal to the royal office, from the excellent counsellors 
whom he knew how to select : men eminent in learning, in 
morals, and in religion. He left behind him the character of a 
great monarch and an empire pacific and strong. On the con- 
trary, Henry IV., your great-uncle, encountered nothing but 
misfortune and disgrace, from the imbecile and impious ad- 
visers whom he persisted in keeping about him. But why go so 
far back for examples ? Are not the Catholic Sovereigns, 
Ferdinand and Isabella, sufficient ? It was their especial 
care to choose egregious men for their service. Moreover, it 
was their habit, passing over all those of their court, how- 
ever known and familiar to them, to select such as their own 
merits or public opinion had celebrated, for great and arduous 
offices. No one in their day was accused of intrigue, or of 
the sale of places so frequent in the present time. Then men 
rose by degrees from an humble to a respectable station, from 
a respectable to an illustrious one, tried and matured as they 
advanced, reward keeping pace with their merits. By this 
conduct and counsel, having received a state weakened and 
distracted by the inexperience and the guilt of predecessors, 
your grandfather was enabled to transmit it freed from all 
these ills. To your Majesty the great God has given talents, 
judgment, and prudence, even in your juvenile years, where- 
with to weigh and consider these things. Examine, and 
you must perceive, the imminent distraction of the State if 
these warnings be disregarded, its happiness if they be at- 



GONZALES XIMENES. 371 

tended to. All things depend upon their commencement, 
and evils are then with the greatest facility remedied. 
Wherefore Spain, suppliant at your feet, demands your com- 
ing, that you may repress the avidity of the corrupt, and 
restore to it tranquillity and content. This you can with 
ease effect, if this noble and extensive land, ever most de- 
voted to its princes, be ruled according to its paternal laws, 
and the established customs of our ancestors. Farewell.' 

While waiting for the coming of Charles, the nobles are 
turbulent, but Ximenes undismayed. For on one occasion 
three of the first nobles of Spain (the Duke of Alva, the 
; Duke of Infantado, and the Count of Urena) treat some 
officers of Ximenes with contumely, and resist the execution 
of his orders, and shut themselves up in the little town of 
Villafrata, which they prepare to fortify and hold out against 
them. Ximenes sends to them some of his National Guard, 
with orders, if the town is not immediately given up, to burn 
it to the ground. The nobles continue to hold out : the town 
is burnt to ashes over their heads. There is no loss of life, 
however, and the refractory nobles are so struck Avith con- 
sternation at what they have done, and what he has done, 
that they sue for pardon — which is granted. Such is the 
vigour of this man's eightieth year. 

But now that vigour begins rapidly to fail — for he falls 
ill this autumn (September 17, 1517) : and on a frame 
strong indeed beyond common strength by nature but worn 
by the toil of Eighty years, disease does quick injury. He 
hears, however, that Charles has landed in Spain — that he is 
among the mountains of Asturias — at Villaviciosa : and he 
gathers strength to write to him. Charles sends him gracious 
messages. But the Flemish courtiers, hearing that Ximenes 
is so ill, have hopes that he and Charles may never meet to 
talk over and reform their vicious practices. So they con- 
trive to delay Charles's advance towards Madrid by various 



372 GONZALES XIMENES. 

devices, and finding that Ximenes bears up under his malady 
longer than they had expected, they persuade Charles to pass 
over into Arragon before he visits Castile. Ximenes hear- 
ing of this, protested against it with great fervency : and 
when he finds that he does not seem to change their plans, 
resolves that if Charles would not move towards him, he will 
move towards Charles. So he orders himself, all ill as he is, 
to be removed from Aranda, on the Douro, where he was seized 
with his fever, towards Toledo. But Charles goes now to 
visit his poor insane mother — who still survives — at Valla- 
dolid — and orders the Cortes to meet there. Ximenes points 
out to him various reasons why an arrangement respecting 
the Cortes different from this would be better. But the 
Flemings have now so worked upon Charles — and those 
disaffected in Spain so crowd about him and them — that the 
recommendations of Ximenes are not attended to. Indeed 
the enemies of Ximenes get so completely the ear of the 
King, that he is at length brought to write a letter to Ximenes, 
which said that he had resolved to go to Tordesillas for the 
present, and begged him to meet him on the way, and give 
his advice about public and family affairs : but that after this 
interview he proposed to give his Minister repose from his 
labours — which indeed had been so great and praiseworthy, 
that God alone could reward them, and that he would ever 
be mindful of his services, and honour his memory as that 
of a Parent. Whether Ximenes ever received this letter — a 
letter which virtually dismissed him from his office — is un- 
certain. His illness had so gained upon him that his 
thoughts were all now taken up with the interests of another 
kingdom — a kingdom in which the least are greater than the 
greatest in any kingdom of this world. He does indeed once 
try to write a farewell letter to Charles, but his hand refuses 
to execute iris will, and so he gives himself up entirely to 
Devotion. And herein he is said to have manifested such 



GONZALES XIMENES. 373 

contrition for his sins, and such humble confidence in the 
Divine Mercy, as deeply affected all around hirn. With no 
emotion visible, however, but quite calmly — now as ever — 
does he await his dismissal : he lies still, and as his last hour 
draws on, with clear consciousness of the fact closes his eyes 
for ever upon the shadows of earth : only uttering with his 
last breath those words of the Psalmist — which were also the 
last words, you will remember, of Francis Xavier — ' In Thee, 
Lord, have I trusted.* 

Such is the story of Ximenes — Gonzales and de Cisneros, 
as he is known in the world — brother Francis, Cardinal and 
Archbishop, as he is known in the Church : the story as it 
seems to me of a great man, but not of one of the greatest — 
of a great Ruler only, and even not one of the greatest of 
such. A man, I would say, largely endowed with great 
gifts, but as largely deficient in great graces. To rule Spain 
in the Fifteenth Century, when it was the most magnificent 
kingdom on earth — the most exalted of all the powers of the 
Old World, and the very Parent of a New one — and to rule 
it wisely and justly and firmly — this was no mean doing. 
But only to govern, and not at all to educate, a nation — this 
is not a quite kingly work. It is for this I think him less 
than the Greatest. His was a Rule merely of Will and of 
Power : governing indeed without defeat, but mechanically 
not vitally : making every instrument of government grate 
against every other, with a constant aud all but intolerable 
friction : and far inferior is this, I think, to the rule of one 
who can convert other men's wills to his own by sympathetic 
adjustment — by a nobler example — by educing their latent 
good : benignly solving difficulties, not rudely crushing them, 
and while making other men his ministers, ennobling them 
consciously by their service. But this kind of elective affinity 
which educes and enlarges the spirits of other men while it 
moulds them into sympathy with itself, is characteristic only 



374 GONZALES XIMENES. 

of the largest souls — and such assuredly was not that of 
Ximenes. But though not this, surely even in the little 
that we have been able to see of him, we cannot have failed 
to recognise in him a man of great strength and loftiness of 
character — a man whole-hearted and sound, and sincere in 
every part of him: of quite uncommon moral earnestness 
and constancy of purpose : and these both stimulated and 
sustained by Religious Principle. A lover of Justice with a 
life-long passion — a passion so strong as to make him an 
unsparing untiring enemy of extortion and oppression: if 
arbitrary, then only to repress arrogance : if severe, then 
only towards the powerful who were the oppressors of the 
weak of whom he was the Defender : and in all ways and at 
all times insensible to all that the world could give or take 
away from him, so only that he might realise his own impulses 
of Duty, or at least some considerable approximation to them. 
These characteristics, certainly, we see in him uniformly : on 
no one occasion can we discern any kind of ambiguity about 
the man, any indecisiveness, any timidity. The spirit that 
in his early days made him voluntarily endure for six long 
years a rigorous imprisonment rather than yield to what he 
believed to be an act of injustice was but a faithful specimen 
— genuine first-fruits — of what afterwards grew to so great 
maturity that he could threaten Popes and resist an Em- 
peror; and the zeal which made him a Monk, and when a 
Monk an Observantine, was but a consistent prelude to that 
sustained enthusiasm which made him afterwards, though a 
Regent, a Reformer. He was rapidly elevated to the high- 
est worldly positions — but never once by his own seeking, 
or with the least perceptible diminution of honesty or of dig- 
nity. He was always equal to every office he undertook ; 
even superior to it, for he always did more in it than was 
expected of him. And though he was a Churchman as well 
as a Statesman — a monk as well as a minister — each cha- 



GONZALES XIMENES. 375 

racter was only confirmed and elevated by the other : for 
from first to last he sought secular ends by secular means, 
but in a religious spirit ; and not as too many have done, 
sought those ends by religious means but in a secular spirit. 
A man born to command, I should say : for not Ambition 
commonly so called — much less vanity, nor enthusiasm, nor 
self-will, nor mere irrepressible desire for activity — justly 
describes, as it seems to me, the dominant spirit of Ximenes. 
True, he seemed to desire power, and to enjoy it, more than 
he desired or enjoyed anything else : but power not for its 
own sake — or for his own sake — but for the accomplishment 
of aims previously and deliberately pronounced by his whole 
man as just and good. And I think it is quite characteristic 
of all gifted men, to feel thus as Ximenes : to feel, I mean, 
cramped and thwarted in their spiritual natures when they 
are not permitted to exercise some alterative influence on 
what is wrong around them : and to attain to only a due de- 
velopment of that nature, when they use other men as their 
instruments for effecting aims which these men themselvesi 
have not the power steadily to contemplate, but have the 
power, under competent direction, efficiently to execute. 
And truly such men ought to be at the head, and it is no 
culpable ambition in them to wish to be so : it is the only 
position which is or can ever seem to them natural : and. 
their being used as the instruments of one course of action 
when they feel they have the capacity for being the authors 
of a better, must be to them as unnatural and unbecoming 
as for a body to walk with its feet upwards, or for the blind 
to guide the seeing. 

But it was by no means for his Intellect that I think 
Ximenes wonderful, or even admirable. His intellect was not 
his especial might : It was his Character, his Will that was 
this. True, though bred in the Cloister, he distinguished 
himself in the Camp and the Cabinet, and therefore may be 



376 GONZALES XIMENES. 

considered more than commonly able : but his general poli- 
tical views had little in them to elevate them above those of 
his age. His aims were not beyond those of an able and a 
just man at all times. His superiority as a statesman lay in 
his administrative faculties — in his power of adapting his 
means to his ends : in his exceeding promptness and readi- 
ness of resource : in his comprehension of detail, and power 
of continuous and diversified attention. Sagacious, clear, 
assured, was he above most men : but not large-minded, nor 
prophetic. But he had more power than his intellect would 
have given him in consequence of his unclouded conscious- 
ness of his own integrity, and the complete conviction of this 
in those whom he governed. All that he did was, though 
most politic, yet direct and avowed : nothing that I know of 
for private aggrandisement at the expense of public interest. 
It is, indeed, because I can discover no self-seeking in the 
man, that he seems to me justly to come into my catalogue 
of Great Men. He shed no blood unnecessarily on any mea- 
sure of State, and never revenged a private injury. His 
magnificent revenues he spent magnificently : in carrying on 
Crusades, in redeeming slaves, in supporting hospitals, in 
founding an university, in editing, as never before had been 
done, the Bible of God. He was a Defender of the Poor and 
a Father of the Orphan. He was the originator of an Insti- 
tution for the Education of the daughters of indigent nobles ; 
and he built, and endowed, a magnificent Chapel in his Ca- 
thedral at Toledo for the celebration of Muzarabic services, 
which have been continued uninterruptedly even to this day. 
He was a man, however, doubtless of austere virtue : just 
above all things, and not unmerciful, but not benign or at- 
tractive, or sympathetic : standing alone among his people, 
by standing above them : not loved but yet not hated — at 
once a rock of offence and a tower of strength : feared 
equally and revered while living, by prince and by people : 



GONZALES XIMENES. 377 

and when dead honoured by his enemies, and canonized by 
his countrymen. 

But what of his Religion? Why, that it was of the Old 
Testament rather than of the New : that he was as Saul rather 
than as Paul — touching the righteousness which was of the 
Law, blameless, but touching the righteousness which is of 
the Gospel, deficient. He had a zeal for Goo, but not ac- 
cording to knowledge : he was a persecutor and injurious, 
thinking he did God service. And certainly had Ximenes 
lived in our days, or even only some while after the Refor- 
mation, and clone anything at all like what he did more than 
three centuries ago, nothing could have induced me to have 
mentioned his name to you with respect — so entirely is it 
my conviction that to persecute for Christ's sake is to be- 
come an Antichrist, and that to propagate the Gospel by 
force is practically to abjure it. Had Ximenes, I say, been 
an Inquisitor now, he would have sinned against light to an 
extent which would have made him exceedingly sinful : but 
he did what he did comparatively ignorantly. He was bred 
up from earliest youth, and all his life through, in principles 
which necessarily involve the legitimacy of Persecution, and 
even make it in some sense a work of Charity. For you 
must remember that the fundamental assumption and asser- 
tion of the Church of Rome is, that Salvation from Eternal 
Misery is only possible through communion with itself — 
wheresoever that communion is practicable. If, therefore, by 
any amount of pains and penalties it can secure communion 
for a new member, or still more prevent apostasy for an old 
one, it argues on its own principles reasonably enough, that 
the salvation of the soul will immeasurably repay hereafter 
any conceivable present miseries of the body. And indeed, 
for any one who holds the notion that the Church of Christ 
is verily and indeed as a Fold within whose visible walls lies 
the only possibility of salvation — that Priests are as Shep- 



378 GONZALES XIMENES. 

herds and all other men as sheep — there must ever be a 
feeling that to drive men into it, and to keep them in it, by 
any means, is an act of mercy rather than of cruelty. The 
end here may not unintelligibly be considered not only as 
justifying, but also as sanctifying the means ; for what shall 
not a man ultimately gain by losing his life on earth if he 
really save his soul for ever ? Persecution in such case can 
only be unreasonable when it is ineffectual : and such, verily, 
was not that of Ximenes. 

But again, we must remember that Ximenes was a Spanish 
Catholic, as well as a Koman one. Roman Catholicism is 
but a kind of Judaic Christianity, and this is bad enough : 
but Spanish Catholicism is a kind of Mohammedan Christi- 
anity, and this is yet worse. Whatever assumes Judaism 
as its base cannot be tolerant. Judaism was built empha- 
tically upon principles of Intolerance : it established itself at 
first not by converting others but by exterminating them : 
and when established, none but Jews were allowed to live 
within the shelter of its communion — all who ceased to be 
Jews were cut off and cast out from it. Judaism knew no- 
thing of what we moderns call Liberty of Conscience, and 
paid no respect to any right of Private Judgment. All duty 
with it was comprised in obedience to Law and observance 
of Rites, and it contained no provision for legitimatising va- 
rieties either of opinion or of practice. But at the same time 
it was not proselytising, and gave therefore no sanction to 
oppressive conversions, nor afforded any precedent for Spanish 
Crusades. But then, here it was precisely that Moham- 
medanism came in to supply it with a new principle of In- 
tolerance. Mohammedanism is of all Religions the most 
aggressive. Proselytism is indeed the very soul of Islamism. 
And eight hundred years of contact and of conflict with 
Mohammedanism had penetrated the whole frame of Spanish 
life with an Arab spirit. True, during all those centuries no 



GONZALES XIMENES. 379 

word of Alliance, but only of Extermination, had ever been 
spoken, or even thought of — but yet a spirit of sympathy had 
passed from one to the other, necessarily and involuntarily : 
and long after the Saracen was banished from Spain, an in- 
fection of his genius lingered, whose fever, indeed, runs 
through the veins of the Spaniard even to this day. The 
speech of the Spaniard to this day bewrayeth him, and wit- 
nesses of his old subjection to the Moor. And so, too, does 
his Religion speak of Mecca as well as of Rome : the Mosque 
and the Minaret are side by side with the Cathedral and the 
Tower in the temples of his Worship. And it is in this 
way only that you can explain that most fearful of all per- 
versions of Christianity, the Invention of the Inquisition. 
Pervert the Religion of the Gospel alone to the utmost, and 
by no possibility could you ever produce such a horrible 
compound of cruelty and hypocrisy : and Judaise Christianity 
as you can, and yet you will not : but add to all these ac- 
cumulated perversions the Mohammedan leaven, and with 
difficulty you may. 

In estimating, then, the special influences of evil at work 
upon this portion of the character of Ximenes, you must 
allow largely for this very peculiar one of Mohammedanism ; 
and also, I think, very distinctly bear in mind that Spanish 
life for eight centuries had been one long-continued Crusade 
— Spain itself for a large portion of that period one pro- 
tracted battle-field. Nobly enough while in the presence of 
the Moor did every Spaniard consider himself a chosen 
Champion of the Cross — a divinely commissioned Soldier of 
the Church — emphatically a Defender of the Faith. And 
thus, after long generations, they all came to consider their 
Church at least as characteristically Militant, themselves as 
a great Military Order, and their Religion not as a living 
spirit in which and by which their own souls were to live 
now and for ever, but rather chiefly as a Sacred Deposit, 



380 GONZALES XIMENES. 

which it was at once their highest honoar and their sure 
salvation, merely to preserve unimpaired, and faithfully to 
defend unto the death. 

And, again, perhaps we should not forget with regard to 
these Persecutions of Ximenes, that they were not directed 
against fellow-Christians and fellow-countrymen — against 
those who exercised Christian Liberty and were seeking to 
promulgate Christian Truth — as so many other Roman 
Catholic persecutions have been ; but against a foreign faith 
and a foreign race: an Eastern people dwelling amidst a 
Christian land : and not against these to an extreme extent, 
unless they strove to gain civil privileges by false pretences. 
Against those who were conscientiously and resolutely Jews 
and Moors, his measures were for the most part only these — 
he compelled them to quit the country, and to take away 
with them all they could remove by converting into money. 
The severities of his Inquisition were directed almost exclu- 
sively against those who had professed themselves Christians, 
and had been baptised as such, and yet practised secretly 
their Jewish and Moorish rites — men, surely, who demand 
less of our sympathy than they who in other lands have 
died under Roman hands for the possession and promulga- 
tion of superior Light. But no word more in extenuation of 
the Persecutor, be he who or what he may. All Persecution 
is to me an abhorrence and an abomination: and that of 
Ximenes, after all that can be said concerning it, must ever 
remain one of the many fearful specimens of the logic of the 
Cloister, and quite an amazing instance of how even a 
righteous man, dwelling apart from human sympathies, and 
nourishing his soul exclusively on dogmas and on rites, may 
be led to do deeds from principle which even bad men have 
forborne to do from passion, and may even ultimately ob- 
literate in his nature the primary principles of Religion, and 
the very axioms of the Moral Law. 



GONZALES XIMENES. 381 

But instead of accusing or excusing Xiraenes, I would 
rather take occasion finally to beg you to see in him how 
corrupting a thing is Religious Bigotry — and how fearful a 
thing it is to put any Theory of a Church or any Articles of 
a Creed before Faith in Jesus Christ Himself, and Love of 
God and our Brethren in Him. How often shall I be called 
upon to say it — and when will men learn the importance as 
well as the truth of the saying — that to be a Christian is to 
be like Christ — in harmony with His mind and inspired 
with His Spirit — and whatever mode of thought or feeling 
we cannot conceive of as possible to have been exhibited by 
Him, is not Christian, whatever else it may be. Let us, then, 
try and learn this great lesson each one for ourselves : and 
then, looking at the infirmities and iniquities of such a Great 
Man as he was whom we have been contemplating this 
evening, let us call to mind from out of what Darkness and 
into what Liberty we have been called by that Glorious 
Reformation which Luther began almost on the very day 
that Ximenes died, and be thankful — evermore praising God 
and saying, 'Not unto us, not unto us, Lord, but unto 
Thy Name, be all the Glory.' 



GASPAED DE COLIGNY, 



The subject of my Lecture is one of the principal personages 
in the history of the Protestant Reformation in France : but 
so intimately in this case is individual character mixed up 
with general history, and so crowded and complicated are the 
events which we shall have to contemplate, that I must 
leave it in a very great measure to yourselves to detach the 
biographical from the historical, and hasten at once to my 
narrative, without doing more than first reminding you of a 
very few circumstances relating to the peculiarities of the 
kingdom and Church of France, which may enable you 
better to understand how the French Reformation was dis- 
tinguished from those which we have already had to con- 
sider while contemplating the characters of Luther and of 
Cranmer. 

You must remember, then, that the kingdom of France 
originally contained within it at least two quite distinct 
races — the Gallic and the Frank — and that only through the 
collisions and commixtures of many centuries did it settle 
down into any kind of coherent nationality. But it early 
became one of the most powerful elements of new Europe. 
The Eighth century, indeed, is one of the very greatest im- 



GASPARD DE COLIGNY. 383 

portance in the history of the French nation, and also of the 
French Church, as in this century occurred those three great 
events — that defeat of the Moors by Charles Martel (one of 
the last kings of the Merovingian period), which prevented 
their further progress in Europe and preserved France from 
becoming as Spain; the invasion of Italy by Pepin (le Bref) 
the founder of the Carlovingian race of kings, and his con- 
stituting the Popedom a temporal sovereignty, by his bestow- 
ing upon Stephen III. and his successors the Exarchate of 
Ravenna and other territories : and the constitution of a new 
Empire of the West by the coronation of Charlemagne, the 
son of this Pepin, by the Pope (Leo IIL) at Rome on the last 
Christmas Eve of this eighth century. Of this new Empire, 
that which for centuries afterwards was called France was 
but a small portion : and when that Empire (which compre- 
hended all modern Germany and a great portion of Italy, 
and extended far beyond the boundaries of both) fell to 
pieces, as it did soon after the death of Charlemagne, even 
that which we have latterly called France was not all go- 
verned by the same Sovereign ; Lorraine, Franche Compte, 
Provence and the Lyonnois, belonging to a titular Emperor, 
even almost to the end of the Carlovingian period. And 
the House of Capet (which commenced the third race of 
Kings in 987) was the first to add to it their own Picardy 
and Champagne: and it was only in the fifteenth century, 
you know, that Burgundy was added to France, as an in- 
heritance of Louis XL, and Provence as a bequest to him 
by the Count de la Marche. Britanny came to France only 
by the marriages of Charles VIII. and Louis XII., and the 
Bourbonnois only by the revolt of the Great Constable of 
Bourbon, during those quarrels between Francis I. and 
Charles V., amid the remnants of which our story to-night 
begins. From these things only you may readily understand 
how the various Provinces of France had not, even in the 



384 GASPARD DE COLTGXY. 

times of which we have to speak, quite got consolidated into 
one uniformly constituted kingdom. Indeed, they had each 
their own local laws and customs until a much later period : 
and, as a general division, we may say that all that portion 
of France south of the Loire was governed by the old 
written Roman law, and all north by the complicated 
unwritten Frankish law. And many of the larger Provinces 
had their own ' States,' or Senates, and their own ' Par- 
liaments,' or Law Courts. And, generally speaking too, 
each Province had its own Governor — whose nomination 
was in the power of the King, but whose office had become 
so much hereditary in the great families of the kingdom that 
it was considered a reproach to them whenever it was not 
allowed to descend from father to son. The diversity, then, 
and complexity of interests and institutions which there were 
at this time in France, you must endeavour to bear in mind, 
in listening to the entanglement of history of which I have 
to speak, and how France had come into its existing state 
only through the successive accretion, rather than the com- 
plete fusion, of a number of varieties of European races. 

And with regard to its Church, you should remember that 
it did not owe its foundation to Papal Rome, as those of 
Germany and England did. While Germany owed its 
Christianisation largely and primarily to Boniface, and Eng- 
land to Augustine, the French Church seems to have been, 
if I may so say, almost self-sown. For among the very 
earliest records of the Christian Church we read of the Mar- 
tyrs of Gaul : and for centuries it spread and strengthened 
by its own native efforts : and though France was the first 
of all the Germanic nations to acknowledge the spiritual 
powers of the Roman See, it was the last to receive its tem- 
poral pretensions. Indeed, as we have already seen, it was 
France that first constituted the Roman See a Temporal 
Power, and therefore it was in a condition more advantageous 



GASPARD DE COLIGNY. 385 

than that of any other nation for vindicating its independence 
in this respect. And thus, though virtually an assimilated 
element of Christendom, it still always had national pecu- 
liarities and prerogatives of its own of which it was jealous, 
and had always kept itself free from that great degradation 
which was so frequent in other countries, as in Spain you 
will remember, and in our own, of having Italians intruded 
into its benefices. The rough way in which its independence 
in this respect had been asserted by its monarchs had often 
been a scandal in Christendom, and you will remember that 
under Philip the Fourth (and the Fair) the kingdom of 
France was subjected to a Papal interdict (as our England 
was under John) in consequence of his opposition to Papal 
prerogatives. Philip had subjected the clergy of France to 
bear their share of the public taxes, and prohibited any 
contribution being levied by the Pope in France. Boniface 
VIII. transferred his kingdom to the Emperor Albert, and 
Philip imprisoned the Pope very nearly until his death — 
which for the time ended this dispute. But long before this 
— in the thirteenth century, under the Royal Saint Louis — 
was established that Treaty which is called the Pragmatic 
Sanction, and which may be regarded as the Magna Charta of 
the Gallican Church — at least in the letter, for really there was 
scarcely anything in this Charter which had not from time to 
time before been conceded or allowed by the Popes. Its 
main provisions were, the securing to the French Church the 
free election of its own bishops, and the prevention of the 
long train of abuses incident to Foreign Patronage. And 
this Treaty was always very jealously guarded: for when 
Francis I. was endeavouring to procure certain political 
objects from the Pope (Leo X.) at the price of surrendering 
this Sanction, and had already agreed to the Concordat of 
Bologna, in which an article to this effect was introduced, 
and all had even been settled by the Council of the Lateran , 

2 B 



386 GASPARD DE COLIGNY. 

in 1515, the Parliament of Paris resolutely refused to register 
it among the Laws of France, and met even the proposition 
of so doing with an indignant and bitter Remonstrance. But 
still, in all this opposition to the Papacy there was more of 
national pride than of evangelical principle : and I think we 
may certainly say that no real Reformation of error, what- 
ever there might have been of abuse, would ever have come 
from France, had there not been new leaven introduced into 
it from without. True, the French Church had already 
given birth to culture of a high quality : and it had its 
Saints and its Doctors, and even its Reformers: but here, 
as always elsewhere hitherto, they had been only speci- 
mens of Piety or prodigies of Learning, rather than Cham- 
pions of Freedom or Preachers of Truth — Reformers at the 
best but of Discipline, and not essentially at all of Doc- 
trine. And when the Reformation of Doctrine did come 
into France, you must note that it did not come all at 
once, and through the uprising of any powerful leading mind 
like that of Luther, or descend from the high places of the 
State and Church, as it did in our own country: but it 
sprang from almost invisible beginnings and rose by almost 
insensible degrees — gradually strengthening itself in the very 
humblest ranks of society, and without any of that aid of 
organization which is given by the public recognition of 
conspicuous Leaders. Doubtless there were eminent men 
among the Protestant Reformers of France — such men as 
Calvin and Beza — but these were not the true centres round 
which the movement turned. Calvin did not publish those 
Institutes of his which first established his superiority until 
many years after persecution had begun against what were 
called the New Doctrines. Indeed we may say that from 
the accession of Francis the First, who began his reign by 
being a great patron of Literature and Art, a spirit of inquiry 
began to spread, and with it, almost as a necessary conse- 



GASPARD DE COLIGNY. 387 

quence, a spirit of Protestantism. His desire to make his 
University of Paris illustrious made him collect together into 
it a number of Foreign books and Foreign men : and among 
these were Protestant books and Protestant men. And very 
soon a freer spirit becomes discernible in the Lectures de- 
livered at this University : and students from all quarters 
begin to crowd to it : and the Printing Press — yet a novelty 
— is used profusely by the Professors in all matters of theo- 
logical controversy. And then those educated at Paris 
return into the provinces, and meet there with others who 
have become like-minded by humbler and independent in- 
struments : surprise is excited and inquiry spreads afresh > 
and converts become visible in almost every class of society, 
up to the highest even at last — for the Queen's sister, 
Margaret of Navarre, comes early to favour the new Doc- 
trines. For a long while the King seems indifferent — con- 
siders it perhaps a form of Literary Life — a part of what he 
had undertaken graciously to patronise. But indeed, he had 
so many other matters to attend to that he might well not 
care to engage in any new one which he could in any way 
avoid : and so for the first ten years of his reign it has time 
to grow almost as it will. But when Francis comes back 
from his foreign imprisonment his whole mind seems altered 
and he begins most fiercely to persecute; in consequence, it 
may be, of his having been persuaded by the foreign clergy 
that his troubles, and those of his kingdom, were the merited 
effects of his tolerance of Heresy. And so now he persecutes 
with a rigour which shall make up for all his deficiencies in 
time past. And such scenes of suffering follow as even call 
forth foreign Protests : but with no great effect : for in the 
thirtieth year of his reign — in 1545 — we find that by order 
of Francis — though at the solicitation of the high dignitaries 
of Church and State — the Vaudois of Mirandol and Cabrieres 
are massacred — men, women and children — twentv-two vil- 



388 GASPARD DE COLIGNY. 

lages of them, containing between three and four thousand 
unresisting persons — with a savagery which it sickens one 
even now to think of. And on the death of Francis and the 
accession of Henry II. — in 1547 — these fearful persecutions 
are continued and even increased ; for now all other punish- 
ments for Heresy are prohibited but that of Death with 
Torture. And at the accession of Francis II. in 1559 there 
arise new grievances for the Protestants — of a different kind. 
For now in consequence of the weakliness of the new King, 
almost all the power of the State becomes virtually vested in 
his mother, Catharine de Medicis (a direct descendant of that 
great family at Florence with whom we are familiar), and 
she calls to the government of the State the half-foreign 
family of the Guises, who are bitterly opposed to Protestant- 
ism, and excludes from all power the natural associates of 
the Sovereign. This is not unreasonably the cause of great 
discontent : for it had for very long been the custom of 
France that in the case of a minority — and in this case the 
circumstances were virtually though not actually the same, 
in consequence of the King being declared of age at 13, and 
his being particularly feeble — the nearest Princes of the 
Blood should have considerable share in the administration 
of the State. And these Princes (who are now the King of 
Navarre and the Prince de Conde, both of them of the Re- 
formed party) meet together, with some of the leading Pro- 
testants, to consult at Vendome, as to whether they should 
submit to the usurpation of the Guises. The Prince de 
Conde and others advise to resort to arms, but counsels of 
Patience and Remonstrance for a while prevail. The Pro- 
testant Churches, however — which have been multiplying 
and strengthening notwithstanding their persecutions — now 
(May 1550) send deputies to Paris, and an assembly is held' 
there at which a Confession of Faith is drawn up and pub- 
lished, which gives to them a recognised symbol by which 



GASPARD DE COLIGNY. 389 

they may be known, and round which they themselves may 
rally. This is followed, however, (in September) by another 
fearful official edict, prohibiting private assemblies for reli- 
gious purposes on pain of Death, and all imaginable, or rather 
unimaginable, cruelties follow. 

The great body of the Protestants suffer with great pa- 
tience, displaying indeed all the noble qualities which one 
might expect from the sincerity and purity of Christian faith. 
It is almost impossible to conceive a more just case for Re- 
sistance than they had, since they were not only massacred 
now simply for worshipping their God according to the only 
way which could be for them in spirit and in truth, but also 
this was done by those who had no lawful authority to rule 
over them. The Guises, be it always remembered, were 
usurpers — men who seized unfairly and exercised unjustly 
the functions of Government: and there was no reason, 
human or divine, for submitting to be exterminated by them. 
But, as I have said, the great body of the Protestants do 
submit, as for nearly forty years now they have submitted, 
to incredible persecutions. I wish you to bear this in mind, 
for I think you cannot overrate the early patience of the 
Protestants. But the natural chiefs of the kingdom and of 
the Protestant party will submit no longer. They have laid 
their case before the most celebrated lawyers and divines of 
Germany and France, and receive their approbation. They 
rise and attempt to rescue the King from the hands of the 
Guises at Amboise — but fail. 

And here for the present we will leave public matters and 
betake ourselves to those private memoirs which are the spe- 
cial subject of this evening's occupation, though speedily we 
shall be obliged to return to them, for the Life of him of 
whom I am to speak was so bound up with the history of the 
Cause of Protestantism in France that it would be wholly 
unintelligible apart from it. 



390 GASPARD DE COLIGNY. 

In the year that Ximenes died, was born Gaspard de 
Coltgny. He was of a noble house — one which had for 
generations exercised a species of sovereignty, and had been 
mixed up with the chief movements in France for nearly 500 
years. His father had married, too, Louise Montmorency — 
a member of one of the noblest families in France — and was 
himself a Field-Marshal. He died in 1522, leaving three 
sons, the second of whom was Gaspard. The eldest, Odet, 
was made a Cardinal by Pope Clement VII. at the age of 
sixteen, and as he was further provided for by ecclesiastical 
benefices, Gaspard naturally took the position of representa- 
tive of the family, and resided on its estate as Seigneur of 
Chatillon. Here he was bred up with more than the com- 
mon culture of a gentleman of those days, in letters as well 
as in arms, being remarkable for speaking Latin fluently, 
and much given to study. We first meet with him with 
the Dauphin of France at the siege of Bains (1543), where 
he acted with great intrepidity, and was wounded in the 
neck. In the same year, too, he was at the important battle 
of Cerisolles (in Lombardy, fought and won by Francis I. 
you will recollect) : and in consequence of his conduct here, 
he was made by Henry II. Colonel-General of the Infantry 
of the whole of the French armies. In this office he intro- 
duced such admirable regulations into the French military 
service that we have the testimony concerning them of a 
contemporary Catholic historian, that 'they were the best 
that have ever been made in France, and have already pre- 
served the lives of at least a million of persons.' "We next 
find him at the siege of Boulogne, which was at that time, 
you will remember, in the possession of the English, and 
the French King was himself before it endeavouring to re- 
duce it. But he does not succeed ; so he leaves it, and sends 
Coligny in his stead : who eventually recovered it out of our 
hands. After this he returned to Court, and on the vacancy 



GASPARD DE COLIGNY. 391 

of the office of Admiral of France he was promoted to it — 
an office at once of the greatest dignity and importance, 
giving him rank among the very highest personages in the 
kingdom, and entrusting to his command the entire sea-coast 
and Military Marine of the country. He was invested like- 
wise with the military government of Picardy and of the Isle 
of France, and was made a member of both the Council of 
State and the Privy Council. In the following year when 
the Emperor Charles V. and Maria Queen of Hungary com- 
bined their forces against the King of France, Coligny (who 
is henceforth generally called The Admiral from his highest 
official title, though he served principally as a General) was 
appointed to the sole command in opposing this formidable 
conspiracy. So unequal, however, were the forces that were 
brought into action on this occasion that the ruin of the 
French seemed inevitable : but the Admiral effected a treaty 
which saved his country's interest on the most honourable 
terms without hazarding a battle. But to the Admiral's 
extreme mortification — a feeling which he freely expressed — 
he was ordered by his King to act in violation of this treaty 
only two months after it was made, by raising forces in aid 
of the schemes of the Princes of the House of Guise (of 
Lorraine), who had persuaded the King of France to join 
them in endeavouring to gain possession of the kingdoms of 
Naples and of Sicily. He had himself been most intimate 
with the Due de Guise and with the Due d'Aumale (his 
brother) when they were all boys together — constant play- 
fellows as children, and intimate companions as young men. 
And to this event — which to him seemed a dishonourable 
course on their part, but to which he was obliged to minister 
as the loyal servant of his King — may be traced, perhaps, 
the first opening of that breach between the families which 
afterwards widened to a great gulf, and of whose widening 
the Admiral's story is a constant history. Now, however, he 



392 GASPARD DE COLIGNY. 

must submit, and be prompt to act too, for the Spanish 
forces — hearing of the schemes of the Guises — have already 
entered Picardy, from the Netherlands frontier, and are 
moving towards St Quentin — with the design of besieging it. 
The Admiral is there before them — but finds the place in a 
miserable condition — almost everybody has fled from it — 
soldiers and all. But the Admiral we shall find to be a man 
whose exertions, and one might say whose courage and skill, 
always rise with difficulties : seldom indeed his success, but 
that surely only makes the noble spirit of the man — which 
never under any defeats or disappointments, however reiter- 
ated, failed or fell — the more admirable. So now he can get 
very few to work at the fortifications : he has not hands 
enough : well, what then ? Why, he adds his own : and 
this makes all others have double strength. And D'Andelot 
(his younger brother) has come — with all the enthusiasm of 
youth, and all a brother's enterprise of affection — and has 
most unexpectedly found his way through the enemy into 
the town. And his uncle the Constable (Anne de Montmo- 
rency) he hears has been sent by the King with aid : but the 
Spaniards intercept him and he never comes. Hearing of 
this, and finding that he has no more to hope for, he calls 
together soldiers and burgesses, and makes them swear, him- 
self setting the example, that the man who first shall speak 
of surrendering shall be put to death — and then dismisses 
each man to his post. And for twenty days continuously the 
Spaniards bombard the town : the Admiral is firm to his 
purpose and prompt exceedingly in maintaining it — but un- 
successful : the place is carried by assault, and himself taken 
prisoner. This was in 1557. And now for a while he is in 
the hands of enemies, and is ill of fever — as we say danger- 
ously ill. But happily so, we may also say. For it seems to 
be during this imprisonment and this illness that his mind 
and heart become deeply impressed with the vanity and 



GASPAED DE C0L1GNY. 393 

vexation of spirit which earthly things are — the importance 
which the things that are not seen are of, and the Peace of 
Heart which they may give. And so, when soon after, he is 
ransomed (as he is by the payment of 50,000 crowns — such 
is the price they put upon him,) he goes not to court as usual 
but to his home, and at once resigns his Colonel-Generalcy 
of the French Infantry to his brother D'Andelot, and his 
Governorship of the Isle of France to his cousin, Marechal 
Montmorency — the eldest son of the Constable Anne. And 
very shortly afterwards he begged permission to resign his 
command of Picardy, but this the King would not allow him 
to do, saying that he could not understand a man's resigning 
so many honourable offices, and that it would certainly give 
others the impression that he had changed his Religion for 
that new one which was now everywhere so much talked of. 
So this office he keeps for a while, and Henry soon after 
dying and being succeeded by Francis II. (who you will 
remember married Mary Queen of Scots — a niece of the 
Guises) he renews his request, and obtains it. 

And now being rid of the distractions of public life — at 
the age of forty-three — he takes up his residence perma- 
nently at Chatillon, and there gives himself up to the culture 
of his own soul, and to acts of beneficence towards his de- 
pendents. And in this he is nobly aided by his wife — a 
person of illustrious descent and virtue — Charlotte de la Val 
— already a Protestant in heart, and soon a Protestant alto- 
gether. For a while they count the cost together of an open 
religious profession : most carefully and deliberately, and 
with repeated prayer to God to lead them further and further 
in the knowledge of His Truth, and to enable them to pro- 
fess faithfully and at all hazards — in defiance of the Edicts 
of Persecution which they see every day put in force around 
them — whatever truths He shall be pleased from time to 
time to communicate to them through the reading of the 



394 GASPARD DE COLIGNY. 

Holy Scriptures. At length, with full foresight of suffering 
and sacrifice, and with all determination to persevere, they 
pledge themselves to each other to open their minds unre- 
servedly to the New Light, and to do God's will as speedily 
as they shall learn it. And so they now read together daily 
the Bible of God and the books of the Reformers : and as 
they learn they teach : assembling around them any friends 
and neighbours that will come, and their own large house- 
hold : and so great is the interest they feel and inspire, that 
Odet the Cardinal and Francis the soldier daily sit down 
with them to search and see whether the things be so in the 
Bible as the New Teachers say. Such study was indeed 
quite new to the Cardinal, but seeking for the truth so sin- 
cerely as he does, he is not long in finding it. D'Andelot, 
however, had already learned much while a prisoner in the 
Spanish wars, and had spoken out very plainly what conclu- 
sion he had arrived at; for when some Protestant books 
were found in the baggage which he lost at the battle of St 
Quentin, and the King was told of this, and sent for him and 
commanded him to declare what he thought of the Mass, he 
had replied, ' I think it a detestable profanation, Sire.' 

Assuredly a nobler group than sat at that council table, it 
seems to me, was not to be seen at that time in France. And 
these three brothers are henceforth, as hitherto they have 
been, undivided and unanimous : a noble brotherhood : and 
so like each other even naturally, as well as spiritually, that 
one portrait, with only difference of costume, might suffice 
for all. Take Coligny's. Of middle stature, well proportioned, 
of light colouring, with full-orbed eyes, dark and mild and 
liquid, kindling only in devotion and in war : commonly of 
calm countenance and still calmer speech ; with voice low and 
soft, but singularly clear : of a grave demeanour, but abund- 
antly prompt and decisive : soldier-like in carriage, courtier- 
like in manner: a man of uniformly unembarrassed presence: 



GASPARD DE COLIGNY. 395 

a gentleman and a nobleman. Such was Coligny — such also 
the Cardinal Chatillon — such also D'Andelot. 

Let us now for a moment recollect where we are in Euro- 
pean history. Charles V., whom we left but seventeen years 
old at the death of Ximenes, has lately died, aged 56 : and 
his great Empire has been divided principally between his 
brother Ferdinand and his son Philip — Ferdinand having the 
Empire with the Austrian dominions, and Philip having 
Spain, Naples, Milan, and the Low Countries. England is 
now under Elizabeth : Denmark under Christian III., and 
Sweden under the heroic Gustavus Vasa. And the Turks 
are in Hungary. 

And now in France, in 1560, occurs what is called the 
Conspiracy of Amboise, of which I spoke just now. The 
Queen Mother sends for Coligny to come and give her counsel 
as to the way of remedying the discontents of the people. 
He instantly waits upon her, and boldly declares that it 
wholly arises from Persecution on account of Religion, and 
ought to be allayed, as it alone can be, by an Edict granting 
Liberty of Worship, and calling a General Council. He 
adds, also, that it would be well to call together an Assembly 
of Nobles to consult concerning the welfare of the kingdom. 
Upon this an Edict of Toleration is instantly framed, but 
with a treacherous reserve which greatly neutralises it : and 
a Council of Nobles is summoned to be held under the presi- 
dency of the King at Fontainebleau. Meanwhile the Queen 
commissions the Admiral to go into Normandy and other 
provinces, and to inquire into the cause of the alarming 
discontents there. This he does, and writes to the Queen, 
that unquestionably the discontents and disturbances are 
owing, as he had before said they were, to Persecutions for 
Religion's sake: and also to a hatred of the injustice and 
arbitrariness with which the Government is administered by 
the House of Guise. And then Coligny comes to the Council 



396 GASPARD DE COLIGNY. 

at Fontainebleau, and at the second sitting he approaches the 
King, and with combined dignity and reverence, amidst the 
hushed breathing of all around, says, 'Having been sent into 
Normandy by your Majesty's order to inquire into the causes 
of the troubles there, I beg permission to report, that I have 
found the first and chief reason of them to be, Persecution 
on account of Religion.' He then begs to be permitted to 
present two papers to the King, and to have them read aloud. 
The King consents — and of what was then read these fol- 
lowing sentences are a part : — 

1 Sire : We, your very humble and most obedient subjects, 
scattered in very great numbers throughout this kingdom, 
desiring to live according to the rule of the Holy Gospel, 
protest before God and you, that the doctrine we follow is no 
other than that contained in the Old and New Testaments : 
and that the faith which we hold is that very faith which is 
comprehended in the Apostolical Symbol, as appears by our 
Confession, which has been before presented. And that our 
greatest desire, after the service of God, is to hold ourselves 
always in obedience to your Majesty, and to the Magistrates 
appointed by you: rendering to you that subjection and 
those duties which faithful subjects owe to their Prince. 

' Therefore, we first supplicate your Majesty to be pleased 
to do us this grace and favour, not to lend ear to those who 
most wrongfully accuse us of seditions, mutinies, and rebel- 
lions against your state ; seeing that the Gospel of which we 

make profession teaches us the exact contrary for 

we confess that we never so well understood our duty to- 
wards your Majesty as since we have learned it by means of 

the holy doctrine preached unto us We humbly, 

therefore, entreat your Majesty that you would be pleased to 
allow us temples of our own, according to the number of the 
faithful in every city and town: in which temples we may 
assemble during the daylight, in all modesty and gentleness, 



GASPARD DE COLIGNY. 397 

to hear the Holy Word of God, offer prayers for the pros- 
perity of your state, and receive the Holy Sacraments as 
ordained by our Lord Jesus Christ, without being disturbed 
or molested by those who know not the Truth of God. And 
because we are taxed with sedition and with making noc- 
turnal and illicit assemblies, if after having obtained such 
place we are found to congregate elsewhere, or to do any- 
thing in any manner contrary to the public peace, we are 
content to be punished as both seditious and rebellious. 

Moreover, desiring as we do only to live in 

peace and tranquillity under the protection of your sacred 
care, rendering unto you joyfully such things as are due 
from subjects to their Sovereign Lord, we will, if it be de- 
sired, consent to pay larger tributes than the rest of your 
Majesty's subjects, in order to shew how wrongfully we are 
accused of a wish to exempt ourselves from those it is your 
pleasure to impose-' 

The King asks the advice of his Council. The Bishop of 
Valence says much : part of which is this — ' The Doctrine, 
Sire, which at present so much occupies the thoughts of your 
subjects, has been sown and sowing this thirty years now, and 
not only for a few days. It has been brought hither and 
maintained by three or four hundred diligent ministers — 
men well versed in letters, distinguished by great modesty, 
seriousness, and seeming holiness ; professing a detestation 
of all vices, and especially of avarice: wholly fearless of 
losing their lives as a testimony to the truth of what they 
preach; having ever in their mouths the name of Jesus 
Christ — a Name the sweetness of which is such as easily to 
open ears the most closed and to penetrate hearts the most 
hardened There are many who have re- 
ceived this doctrine and retain it with such- fear of God and 
respect for you, Sire, that for worlds they would not offend 
you. Both their life and death instruct us that they are 



398 GASPARD DE COLIGNY. 

moved by a fervent zeal and ardent desire to seek the true 
road to salvation, and having as they think found it, they 
will not depart from it, counting as nothing, for the sake of 
it, the loss of worldly goods and all the torments that can be 
endured, and even death itself. And I confess, when I think 
upon those who have died with such constancy, I am alto- 
gether horrified : and I deplore our own misery, who seem 
touched neither by zeal for God nor for Religion.' Coligny 
again rises and supports the Petition, saying that though not 
signed it is the expression of 150,000 Protestant hearts, and 
ought to be granted. And hereupon arose such violent 
dispute between him and the Due de Guise, that the long 
friendship and intimacy between them was here and now 
severed for ever. They leave the Council each on their 
several ways — the one contrary to the other : the Due de 
Guise determined henceforth to extirpate Protestantism from 
France : the Admiral Coligny resolved to lay down, if need 
be, his life for its defence. 

The States General, however, are summoned to meet at 
Orleans : and the Admiral conceives that something may 
be done by pacific means, so he determines to go, though 
dangers seem to threaten all Protestants who do so. The 
King of Navarre and the Prince de Conde also go, under ex- 
press promise of honourable treatment, enticed thither by the 
Queen Mother, at the instigation of the Guises. But no 
sooner does Conde arrive than he is seized and imprisoned, 
and condemned to death. None stand by him — not even his 
own brother — save the Admiral and the Cardinal de Cha- 
tillon. But no effort of theirs, it would seem, could avail to 
save him, an early day being fixed for his execution. He is 
saved, however, most unexpectedly by the death of the King, 
which takes place in the interval (December 1560) ; and all 
interests are changed. 

De Coligny has now interest enough with the Chancellor 



GASPARD DE COLIGNY. 399 

De L'Hopital to get edicts passed for the pardon of all poli- 
tical prisoners, and for some small measures of Toleration. 
Several things, too, concur to favour this. The new King is 
a minor : therefore the Princes of the Blood Royal have a 
right to the administration of the Government, and to con- 
stitute the Regency. The weak King of Navarre, however, 
has some time ago promised to make over his right to the 
Queen Mother for certain political considerations. The Prince 
de Conde is now rescued from the scaffold, but not called to 
the Council board. The Reformed doctrines now become a 
kind of court fashion, and are secretly countenanced by the 
Queen Mother. The influence of the Guises declines corres- 
pondingly. But in consequence of financial measures which 
would weigh heavily upon the Constable Montmorency as 
well as upon the Guises, the Constable joins with the Guises 
to resist them, forming an alliance which remains unbroken 
during the remainder of their lives. They attend Mass to- 
gether at Easter 1561, and with the Marechal St Andre (a 
man who has been already active and influential on the 
Catholic side) form that which is called in French history 
,the Triumvirate. But at present this is not made public, and 
for awhile, as I have said, Protestantism seems to be rising 
into favour, though a Council preliminary to the Assembly 
of Pontoise passes a somewhat intolerant Edict in July. The 
Assembly itself, however, shews great disposition to Reform : 
even passing this remarkable Resolution : ' The possessions 
of the Church have no other origin than the liberality of kings 
and ancient barons : and those who enjoy them are properly 
but administrators : it therefore lies always in the King and 
order of nobility who have Founder's rights, to determine 
their application and uses.' And the Queen Mother even 
goes so far as to give a pledge to this Assembly, through the 
Admiral, that her son (Charles) shall be educated as a Pro- 
testant. 



400 GASPARD DE COLTGNY. 

And there is now (September 9, 1561), held a most re- 
markable meeting at Poissy, near Paris — called a Colloquy — 
at which it is agreed to discuss publicly the respective merits 
of the Catholic and the Reformed Doctrine. The letter which 
the Queen Mother writes, or causes to be written, to the 
Pope (Pius IV.) in explanation of the holding of this meet- 
ing, is very illustrative of the state of parties at this period. 
It states that the Reformed have become so numerous and 
powerful that they cannot either be put down by arms or 
cut off from the Church : that the morality and essential 
faith of the Reformed is good : and that there are certainly 
scandals in the Unreformed which it would be well to do 
away with — instancing as necessary, or at least advisable, 
reforms, the abolition of images in churches — of the use of 
Latin in public services — of the celebration of solitary masses 
— and the restoration of communion in both kinds. The 
Pope, influenced it may be by the tenour of that remarkable 
resolution which I have mentioned as passed by the States 
of Pontoise, and also by the opportunity it would afford him 
for accomplishing the long wished-for scheme of getting a 
Roman Legate recognised in France, replies most blandly, 
and leaves all to his faithful Cardinal of Lorraine. Safe- 
conducts are granted to all Calvinist ministers who may be 
deputed to attend — among whom are Theodore Beza and 
Peter Martyr. After all due preparations and ceremonies 
the Colloquy commences. Theodore Beza asks permission 
to open it with prayer, and obtains it. So he falls upon his 
knees and offers up a prayer such as the majority there had 
never heard before. And this he follows up by an admirable 
speech, bold and temperate, thoroughly Christian. The Car- 
dinal of Lorraine replies in a speech most able, most plau- 
sible, thoroughly politic. And other minor Colloquies ensue 
— but no practical advance is made towards the ostensible 
object of the meeting. But the persons of greatest power 



GASPARD DE COLIGNY. 401 

now in the State may be considered to be the Prince de 
Conde, Admiral Coligny, and the Chancellor L'Hopital. 
Under these aspects in the beginning of next year (January 
1562) there is called together at St Germains an Assembly 
of Notables, principally with the purpose of considering the 
Religious affairs of the kingdom. The Chancellor opens the 
Session with a very noteworthy speech : in which he gives a 
summary of what had been hitherto done in Religious mat- 
ters by penal enactments, and how entirely unsuccessful they 
had been, the Protestants being now more numerous and 
more powerful than ever : so much so that any further per- 
secutions would inevitably bring on all the horrors of a civil 
war : and concluding by saying, ' Gentlemen, the questions 
which you really have to decide are these, Ought the new 
Religion to be tolerated according to the demands of the 
Nobles and Tiers Etat at Pontoise ? or must it be regarded 
as a thing impossible that men of different religious opinions 
should live in peace in one society — in other words, that 
none but a Catholic is capable of fulfilling the duties of a 
citizen?' For ten days there is vehement debate — speech 
as for life and death — loud and hot, passionate, even to defi- 
ance — as the wrestling of men's very souls with each other — 
ending, however, in the production of an Edict which seemed 
as if it might be the Magna Charta of Protestantism in 
France. Alas ! it was not : but here it is, and for a while 
let us rejoice in it. 

It first sets forth the evils which have arisen from diver- 
sity of opinion in religious matters — the means which have 
been taken for the removal of those evils, and the inefficacy 
of them — and the desire and intention of now trying measures 
of gentleness and reconciliation : and then makes, amono- 
many others, these following provisions : — 

1. That the Protestants should restore to the Roman 
clergy all property of every kind of which they had deprived 

2 c 



402 GASPARD DE COLIGNY. 

them, and abstain, under pain of death, from any future for- 
cible interference with their rights or worship. 

2. That the Protestants should not exercise their own 
worship within the towns: but should have full liberty of 
holding religious meetings without the towns — if they at- 
tended unarmed, and permitted the civil magistrate to be 
present when he wished. That under similar conditions 
Synods also might be held. 

3. That the Protestants should make no levies — either of 
men or money — under religious pretexts: that marriage 
should not be celebrated by them within the degrees of con- 
sanguinity prohibited by the Catholic Church: and that 
ministers should preach no doctrine contrary to the Council 
of Nice, or the Canonical books of the Old and New Testa- 
ments, and should use no offensive expressions against the 
Catholic Church. 

4. That every Protestant minister should present himself 
before a certain day, before the nearest judge, to swear to 
the observance of these articles. 

These are the principal articles of that Edict — an Edict 
which speaks well surely for the Hugonots, and also for the 
Administrators of Government, at this time. 

The Admiral now retires with his brother D'Andelot to 
his estate of Chatillon, where we will follow him, and look 
at this picture, by a contemporary, of his domestic life there. 
As soon as the Admiral rose — which was very early — ' he 
knelt down, as did his attendants, and made a prayer after 
the fashion of the French Hugonot Churches : after which, 
while he was waiting for the Sermon (which was preached 
every other day, accompanied with the Singing of Psalms), 
he gave audience to the deputies of the churches that were 
sent to him, and employed himself in public. Occasionally 
he did business after the sermon until dinner-time. When 
dinner was ready, his household servants, except those who 



GASPARD DE COLIGXY. 403 

were immediately employed in the necessary duties of the 
table, all waited in the great hall. When the table was set, 
the Admiral, with his wife by his side, stood at the head of 
it. If there had been no Sermon that morning a Psalm was 
sung, and then the usual benediction followed : which cere- 
mony numbers of Germans — colonels and captains, as well 
as French officers who were asked to dine with him — can 
witness he observed without even intermitting a single day 
— not only in his own house in days of quiet, but even whilst 
he was with the army. The cloth being taken away, he 
rose, as well as his wife and all his attendants, and either 
returned thanks himself, or caused his chaplain to do so. 
And having observed that some of his household could not 
regularly attend the Prayer at a late hour in the evening on 
account of their occupations, and of the time which could not 
be regularly fixed, he ordered that every one of them should 
present themselves in the great hall immediately after supper, 
and then, after singing a Psalm, a Prayer was said/ 

1 On the approach of the time for the celebration of the 
Supper of the Lord, calling together all the members of his 
household he told them that he had to render an account to 
God, not of his own life only, but also of theirs : and then he 
reconciled such of them as might have differences. If any 
of them seemed not sufficiently prepared for the right com- 
prehension and due veneration of that Mystery, he saw to 
their being better instructed : and if he found any obstinate, 
he told them frankly that it was better for him to live alone 
than to support wicked followers. Moreover, he thought the 
institution of colleges for youth, and of schools for the in- 
struction of children, a singular benefit from God, and called 
them a seminary of the Church, and an apprenticeship of 
Piety — holding that ignorance of letters had introduced both 
into the Church and into the Commonwealth that thick dark- 
ness in which the tyranny of the Pope had its birth and in- 



404 GASPARD DE COLIGNY. 

crease — a tyranny which domineered over the blind and the 
erring, just as, according to the poets, the God of Riches and 
of Hell ruled over Night and Darkness. This conviction led 
him to lay out a large sum in building a college at Chatillon, 
and there he maintained three very learned Professors of 
Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, and many students.' 

A beautiful life surely is this of the Admiral's, especially 
when we consider what society in his rank was generally at 
this time in France : but it cannot last ; for the Edict of 
January has given great offence to the Catholics, and they 
have now for some months been negotiating with Philip of 
Spain to secure his aid : and through him they are enabled to 
offer to the King of Navarre several considerable bribes if he 
will form a Coalition with the Guises to persecute Protes- 
tantism. These Anthony accepts. And so the Catholics 
think themselves powerful enough to endeavour to regain 
their former superiority. There are various outrages in the 
provinces, and the Due de Guise, who has been absent of late 
on his estates, is summoned to Paris by his new ally the 
King of Navarre, as Lieutenant-General of the kingdom, and 
is returning in a most menacing attitude. The Queen-Mother 
is alarmed, and writes several letters to the Prince de Conde 
to come to her protection and that of her son. And as the 
Due de Guise, on his journey to Paris from his estate at 
Joinville, passes through Vassy, where his mother Antoinette 
de Bourbon lived, an affray begins between his attendants 
and the Hugonots who are at worship in a barn just without 
the town. This deepens into a fearful confusion and conflict, 
and then into a massacre ; for the Duke's train being all 
armed and the Hugonots all unarmed, and being a mingled 
multitude of women and children as well as men, it could not 
be called a fight. Sixty at least are left dead on the ground, 
and more than two hundred are wounded. This was an 
open infraction of the Edict of January, and being at the 



GASPARD DE COLIGNY. 405 

time encouraged by the Due de Guise, produced by its ex- 
ample the most disastrous effects. It served as the exciting 
cause for many similar outrages in nearly thirty other towns, 
and at least 3000 Protestants were now sacrificed under cir- 
cumstances of especial barbarity — Beza, in his complaint to 
the King, says, ' stabbed, stoned, beheaded, strangled, burned, 
buried alive, starved, drowned, suffocated.' The Queen- 
Mother sends for the Due de Guise to give an account of this, 
and commands that he come to her at Monceaux, with only 
twelve attendants. He enters Paris, however, with twelve 
hundred, a wholly royal retinue, and at the Royal gate too 
of St Denis. 

The Prince de Conde and other Protestant chiefs hurry to 
Coligny. He advises Patience, considering the means at 
their command wholly inadequate at present to any successful 
enterprise. The chiefs disperse to prepare. The Admiral 
remains at home to counsel. But his wife — the always noble 
Charlotte de la Val — urges him to the field, passionately, 
repeatedly, for their Brethren's sake. He expresses entire 
willingness to hazard all as far as himself is concerned, even 
with forces which his deliberate judgment pronounces utterly 
inefficient : but it must be a work not of impulse, but of 
most deliberate resolution ; for if he begin, he will never give 
up until the work, or his ability to work at it, be all over. 
She thinks courage in a good cause may make up all defici- 
encies : he thinks it may some — many — but not all. How- 
ever, if she will for a week deliberately count the cost for 
herself and prepare herself for the very worst, considering 
well what a Civil War implies and involves — he will go 
instantly and go cheerfully. At the end of that time — a 
time of tearful prayers— she says to him, ' Sir, the week is 
over : I believe that Duty calls you to the field — go. The 
Lord will never give the victory to the enemies of His Truth. 
In the name of God therefore, I call upon you to delay no 



406 GASPARD DE COLIGNY. 

longer, but go save our Brethren, or die in the attempt/ 
The next day the Admiral is on the road to Meaux, to meet 
the Prince de Conde. Here they take counsel; but while 
they do so, the Due de Guise and the King of Navarre go to 
Fontainebleau and take possession of the King's person, and 
bring him to Paris. This is a step of great importance, 
because it gives the opposite party the appearance of fighting 
against the King — of being Rebels as well as Protestants; 
whereas really the King is a mere Prisoner in the hands of 
Usurpers. 

The Prince and the Admiral seize upon Orleans as their 
head-quarters, and there draw up a solemn Act of Union for 
the Defence of Religion until the majority of the King, and 
all solemnly sign it. Coligny now sets about doing what 
Cromwell did — making Ironsides, and it answered abun- 
dantly, for his Casaques Blanches proved men fearing God 
and none besides. Let us hear a Hugonot officer who has 
left us his Memoirs : he says, ' When this war began, the 
zeal of religion was strong in the army, so that without 
constraint each one was held by himself in subjection ; more 
especially the nobility, who shewed themselves worthy of the 
name they bore — for, marching through the country they 
neither pillaged nor ill-treated their brethren, contenting 
themselves with little, and they who had the means, paying 
honestly. If a crime was committed in any troop, the guilty 
person was banished or delivered into the hands of Justice : 
his very companions would not intercede for him, so great 
was their detestation of wickedness and love of virtue. I 
remarked four notable things in the Hugonot Army — 1st, 
Throughout this great multitude, the name of God never 
blasphemed : 2d, Not a pair of dice nor a pack of cards in 
the Camp : 3d, No woman accompanying : 4th, No pillaging 
or foraging, each being content with his allowance of pro- 
visions. Also, evening and morning, when guard was 



GASPARD DE COLIGNY. 407 

changed, public prayers were made, and the singing of 
Psalms resounded through the camp. In all which matters 
we cannot but remark a spirit of Piety unusual in those 
accustomed to war.' The Admiral, however, doubted this 
continuing if the war was protracted ; and it appears, by the 
same authority, that he was right in his anticipations, for 
not long afterwards we find instances of a somewhat rapid 
decline of discipline both moral and military — 'though M. 
L'Amiral spared no pains to remedy it : indeed, he was un- 
pitying, and none could expect, by frivolous excuses, to 
escape, if guilty.' 

Instantly, on the seizure of Orleans, the Council of Govern- 
ment at Paris declares itself a Council of War — and excludes 
the Chancellor L'Hopital, who was for Accommodation. 
They order all Protestants to quit Paris in twenty-four 
hours. The Prince of Conde publishes a spirited manifesto 
— setting forth that his only views are to obtain security for 
Toleration, and offering to retire into private life if the Guises 
will do so too. An answer to this is published by the Par- 
liament of Paris. The Prince publishes a second manifesto, 
and there are several replies and rejoinders — all able, but 
ineffective for Peace. The Admiral writes a letter to the 
Constable, in which, amid much else, he says — c God will 
finally judge our several intentions, and I protest before Him 
that not one of the company here assembled (at Orleans) 
has taken up arms against the King and his authority, or 
against the members of the Roman Church : but solely to 
maintain the monarchy, and to defend those of our Religion 
from violence committed in defiance of the wish and intention 
of the King, and Queen, and of the States General of this 
Kingdom, expressed in the Edict of January 1562.' All at- 
tempts, however, at negotiation fail: and the armies take 
the field. But once more an attempt at accommodation is 
made. The Queen proposes^ conference between the chiefs. 



408 GASPARD DE COLIGNY. 

It takes place at Thoury, in La Beauce : the Queen-Mother 
and the King of Navarre on the one side, are met by the Prince 
de Conde and the Admiral Coligny on the other. While 
they debate, most affecting is the scene between their at- 
tendants — brother taking leave of brother, friend of friend, 
with passionate embraces — but parting to meet again only 
in the thickest of the fight. All is ineffectual : and so now 
the Civil and Religious War begins, and all its peculiar 
horrors. 

I should have said, that already thirty-five cities have de- 
clared for the Protestants, but that terrific massacres have 
taken place in others, and that there are conflicts of all kinds 
and degrees of horror everywhere throughout France : the 
murders of Marshal Montluc in Gruyenne standing out in 
awful prominence, and having a singular significance for us 
because receiving cordial approbation given under the Ring 
of the Holy Fisherman. In one instance only do we find 
cruelty committed on the Protestant side, and this by one 
(the Baron des Adrets), who is so denounced for it by the 
Protestant leaders that he deserts to the Catholic side. 

And now, on the 13th of June, 1562, an Arret of the Parlia- 
ment of Paris is published — scarcely to be paralleled in the 
annals of legislation. By this all the property of all Protes- 
tants is confiscated, and all Catholics are exhorted to rise up 
and slay every man his brother who is a Hugonot through- 
out the whole kingdom of France. In consequence of this, 
the most fearful massacres are committed, and it is said that 
thirty thousand persons perish. Many also desert from the 
Protestant Army, and the first encounters with the Catholic 
forces are unfavourable to the Protestants. The Prince 
and the Admiral, however, are not men readily to lose heart. 
They send for reinforcements from Germany and from 
England. The Catholics besiege Rouen, and take it : but 
with the loss of the King of Navarre, who is killed there. 



GASPAED DE C0LIGSY. 409 

Other reverses follow ; until D'Andelot comes with German 
aid, and then the Protestants march directly upon Paris. 
The Queen sends to open negotiations : the Prince and Ad- 
miral consent to treat : the scenes at Thoury are repeated, 
and they delay long negotiating, until Catholic reinforcements 
arrive, which, with the defection of one of their principal 
officers, compel them to retire, and all negotiation is broken 
off. They go into Normandy : and there is fought the battle 
of Dreux — with inferior forces on the Protestant side, but 
preponderating success : the Catholics losing 8000 — the Pro- 
testants 3000 ; the Marechal St Andre being killed, and the 
Constable taken prisoner, on the Catholic side — on the Pro- 
testant side the Prince de Conde being taken prisoner. 

The Admiral is now unanimously appointed Commander- 
in-chief. He marches to Havre to meet his English sub- 
sidies that have promised to be there. But he finds none. 
His Germans mutiny. The Admiral is undismayed, and 
harangues with great good effect. The subsidies arrive, and 
money. With these the Admiral takes Caen from the 
Due de Guise's younger brother, and returns towards Or- 
leans. 

And here before Orleans a change is given to the whole 
aspect of the war by the Assassination of the Due de Guise, 
18th of February, 1563. The assassin was one Jean Poltrot — 
a man who had been a gentleman, but at present was rather 
of an ambiguous quality — half-spy, half-fanatic— doubtfully 
sane, it may be. He under torture names the Admiral and 
others as employing him in this service. The Admiral 
abundantly vindicates himself from this charge in a letter to 
the Queen-Mother : the admission in the conclusion of which, 
however, his friends thought unnecessary and unwise. It 
was this : ' Do not, however, imagine that what I say pro- 
ceeds from any regret at the death of the Due de Guise. No, 
far from this : for I esteem it the greatest blessing that could 



410 GASPARD DE COLIGNY. 

possibly have befallen this kingdom, the Church of God, and 
more especially myself and all my house. If it shall so please 
your Majesty, it shall prove the means of tranquillising this 
kingdom, and all this army wish it to be so understood.' 
And a peace does follow very shortly (March 14), pro- 
claimed in what is called the Edict of Amboise, but one 
made by Conde without Coligny's participation, and greatly 
grieving him : because it failed to stipulate for conditions 
favourable enough to the Reformed Eeligion, as it is now for 
the first time openly designated. But deficient as it is in 
Toleration, it is with difficulty that the Parliament of Paris 
will register it — they being indignant that it should be as 
favourable as it is. It allowed but one town in a district for 
the free celebration of the Reformed Worship, besides the 
houses of the principal nobility. Of course the prisoners of 
war on both sides are set at liberty. 

The treaty, however, does not promise to be of very long 
duration, or to be very effective in restoring amicable relations 
between the great bodies of the Catholic and Protestant po- 
pulation — without which no permanent settlement can be 
reasonably looked for. There soon arise many indications of 
a change. Conde is being captivated by the pleasures of 
the Court, and growing inattentive to the Protestant inte- 
rests: and even, singularly enough, is to be found leading an 
expedition against his late English allies, in order to dislodge 
them from Havre, and compel them to quit the Country. 
This was in July, 1563. With this the Admiral refuses to 
have any thing to do. Indeed he has very special business 
of his own to occupy him just now. For the King has just 
come of age — at Thirteen — and the mother and widow of the 
late Due de Guise take the very earliest opportunity of de- 
manding from him an investigation into the Admiral's share 
in his assassination. This is a matter of personal honour 
which he cannot neglect, and so he comes instantly to court, 



GASPARD DE COLIGNY. 411 

and asserts himself in all ways most boldly, pushing on the 
inquiry with even more eagerness than his enemies: hut 
after some informal legal proceedings, and some still more 
informal civil tumult, the King adjourns the matter, for- 
bidding any discussion of it for three years. The Admiral 
retires to Chatillon, and the Government of Picardy is now 
given to Conde. 

The Guises have been clearly unsuccessful here : but now, 
opportunely enough for them, the Cardinal (brother of the late 
Duke) is returning from the Council of Trent — with a deter- 
mination, too, to have the decrees of the Council recognised 
in France — if he can. He enters Paris with such a retinue 
of armed followers that the city i3 in a panic. The Governor 
— the Marshal Montmorency — sends for the Admiral, who 
comes instantly with Five Hundred Gentlemen of his party, 
and quiets all, and returns to Chatillon. 

But all these things have been going on at Paris in the 
absence of the Court: for the Queen some time ago has 
taken her son the King on a long Progress through the 
provinces, to meet her daughter Isabella who is coming from 
Spain. Most unfortunate Progress this for the Protestants : 
for in June 1565, at Bayonne, the Queen comes in contact 
with the Duke of Alva — nearly the worst man, as it always 
seems to me, to be met with in these ages : and this man 
exercises a most fearful influence over her mind, and most 
successfully indoctrinates her with the principles of an ex- 
terminating persecution. And at Roncillon an Edict has 
already been published greatly limiting even the Edict of 
March — which had also already been somewhat limited by 
what is called the Edict of Rouen. Against this new Edict 
Conde — who after his expedition against the English had 
applied for and been refused the Lieutenant-Generalship of 
the kingdom, and in consequence retired from Court — now 
protests most vigorously. And truly it was one having very 



412 GASPARD DE COLIGNY. 

bad effects on the Cause of the Reformed : for though its 
provisions were not necessarily so persecuting, yet it was 
altogether retrograde in its tenor, and encouraged a perse- 
cuting spirit. And this encouragement is speedily acted 
upon in many places by the Catholics: insomuch that at 
this time no less than Three Thousand Protestants perish by 
the hands of their Catholic brethren. These things, and the 
proceedings of the Duke of Alva in Flanders, arouse the 
Admiral again, and both he and Conde appear instantly at 
Court (which has now just returned to Blois, December 
1565), in order to counteract this progress of persecution. 
But nothing can be done before the affair of the Admiral 
and the Guises is settled, and so in February 1566, the 
King formally concludes the matter by pronouncing in the 
Admiral's favour, and endeavouring publicly to reconcile the 
two houses. And in order to shew how entirely he believes 
the Admiral and his friends free from the slightest stain, he 
proposes himself as Sponsor to the new son of the Prince de 
Conde (who has married sometime now Francaise D'Orleans), 
and appoints Coligny to stand proxy for him. 

But these things do not blind or pervert the leaders of the 
Protestant cause: for they now push forward their opposition 
to the new Persecution very vigorously, and press an offer of 
their services to counteract the operations of the Duke of 
Alva. The Queen accepts them, and on the ground of this 
expedition raises a force of 6000 Swiss. The Admiral dis- 
likes this proceeding, doubting the Queen's sincerity, and 
fearing lest this force should be turned against the Hugonots 
at home, rather than carried against the Spaniards in Flan- 
ders : and so it proves, for the first thing heard of these 
Swiss is that they are fast marching towards Paris— and all 
the Catholic troops are recruiting and levying afresh. The 
Hugonot chiefs assemble and take council. The Prince and 
Admiral have received information which they can wholly 



GASPARD DE C0LIGNY. 413 

rely on that these preparations are indeed aimed against 
them — even for their utter extermination. D'Andelot and 
some others are for an instant rising, and they prevail : and 
the 26th of September is fixed for it. The Queen hears from 
Montluc a few days before this that there are strange move- 
ments among the Hugonot gentry. She thinks that it can- 
not be anything serious, otherwise she must have heard it 
from other quarters, having spies everywhere. However, to 
make assurance doubly sure, she sends an express spy to 
Chatillon to see what the Admiral is about ; he comes back 
saying that the first and last thing he saw there was the 
Admiral, in true working dress, anxiously thinning his 
plantations : and so she feels abundantly relieved. And the 
Constable, when advised of this matter, says that he is 
not a man to overlook the smallest symptom of evil in 
the State, and that a Hugonot army was not a thing that 
could be carried about in a man's sleeve. But it is a fact 
that the Prince and the Admiral are within a few leagues of 
them, and the tidings come as a panic. Their device is to 
send the Marshal Montmorency to open a negotiation, with 
the amplest terms that the Protestants could demand. The 
Prince and Admiral are deceived by this, and consent to 
treat. While the negotiations are going on, the Swiss come 
up, and all propositions of Peace are at once broken off. 
The Swiss then conduct the King into Paris from Meaux, 
where he was : and the Hugonots can do little more than 
harass their retreat. They feel the failure of this : and retire 
to consult together for a while. They find that the rising- 
has been even more general than they expected : so they 
proceed to blockade Paris. Paris is again in a panic : the 
King again sends to treat, and is again met willingly by the 
Prince and the Admiral — but only again and again to be 
deceived. They draw up a petition setting forth most dis- 
tinctly that they are not in arms against the King, and that 



414 GASPARD DE COLIGNY. 

if they could believe that he was a free agent they would 
obey him unto death : but they war against his Directors — 
having certain intelligence that these Directors of his con- 
template further persecutions and even massacres. It also 
begs the enforcement of the Edict of January — the assem- 
bling of the States-General — the delivery of three towns into 
Protestant keeping — and the dismissal of the Guises. This 
petition is presented by the Chancellor to the King : and at 
first there seems some chance of a favourable reply — many 
large towns declaring in favour of the Protestants. But 
large Catholic forces are approaching Paris, and the Catholics 
feel themselves now so strong that they try to persuade the 
King to break off abruptly all negotiation. But this is not 
done, though after prolonged diplomacy, in which the Car- 
dinal de Chatillon is prominent, all prospect of reconciliation 
vanishes, and on the 10th of November, 1567, the battle of 
St Denys is fought. In consequence of the absence of D'An- 
delot — who has been sent to cut off the succour which is 
coming from the Duke of Alva — the Protestant forces 
amount only to about 1500 cavalry and 1200 infantry, 
while the Catholic amount to about 3000 cavalry and 16,000 
Infantry. A desperate encounter this surely for the Hugo- 
nots — an exciting one for all Paris, for the battle was fought 
in sight of its citizens — just without the walls. The old 
Constable, in his eightieth year, commands the Catholics in 
person — and is slain. The Hugonots, however, are formally 
defeated ; but truly a few more such defeats and they would 
have been victorious. D'Andelot comes the day after the 
battle : and German forces — some 10,000 men, under Prince 
Casimir — come over to join the Hugonots: and they are 
strong again : only wanting money to pay these mercenaries. 
And truly now is seen how much the Cause is at the hearts 
of those who fight for it: for poor indeed and every way 
reduced as the Hugonot army is, this army — all and each, 



GASPARD DE COLIGNY. 415 

from the general to the groom — subscribe to pay these 
foreigners their wages, and are content to lack their own. 
They march towards Paris again. The Chancellor (L'Hopital) 
now publishes a political paper setting forth, with singular 
wisdom and force, the real condition of the kingdom — its 
miseries and their remedies. This has a great effect upon 
both parties, and leads to immediate negotiations for peace. 
Ample conditions are offered by the representatives of the 
King. The Admiral and the Prince feel that these offers are 
too good to be accepted with prudence. But the Army are 
delighted with them, and rise tuinultuously, declaring that 
they will abandon their leaders if they are not accepted: 
and so say also Prince Casimir and his Germans, as the King 
has promised to pay them all their arrears. The Admiral 
argues and exhorts and protests : reminds them how often 
they had been deceived before: and declares that no one 
could be more anxious for Peace than he, but that this was 
only a seeming, and not a real, opportunity for it. In the 
midst of these discussions the Admiral is called away by the 
death of his wife — and on his return he finds that his opinion 
has been overruled. The ministers of the Reformed, how- 
ever, he finds almost everywhere supporting his views. The 
Peace of Longjumeau is concluded (March 20, 1568), and 
the Admiral retires to Chatillon. 

But scarcely for a month are the conditions of this Treaty 
fulfilled. The Protestants laid down their arms and dismissed 
their Foreigners, but the Catholics will do neither : and the 
Clergy consider that the Heretics are so much too well 
treated by it that they promote private persecutions in many 
of the large towns — which end in massacres — and the public 
authorities do not interfere. Indeed it is found that they are 
forming among the nobles and gentry • Associations ' and 
1 Leagues ' for exterminating the Protestants. And so boldly 
is this now for the first time discussed in the Cabinet Coun- 



416 GASPARD DE COLIGNY. 

cils, that the tolerant Chancellor retires, deeming further 
attempts to procure Toleration hopeless. And very soon 
after comes forth a Royal Edict, depriving all Protestants of 
every office or dignity under the Crown — thus taking away 
from Coligny his office of Admiral, and from D'Andelot that 
of Colonel-General of the French Infantry — and from many 
others their governments. And such fearful rumours are 
abroad that Conde at once repairs to Coligny, who has gone 
to his brother's stronghold of Tanlay, near Noyers. Here, 
indeed, Teligny (a young officer at court favourable to the 
Reformed) brings letters of apparent affection from the King. 
But these are followed by intelligence which shews them at 
once that these letters are not to be trusted, but that if they 
would escape imminent destruction they must remove from 
where they are, and that directly. So with their children and 
households and all they had they go to La Rochelle — which 
just before this had fallen into Protestant hands — Cardinal 
Chatillon now going to England to help them there by ne- 
gotiations. Here they are well received, and find an admir- 
able centre of action : and here now also assemble all the 
remnants of the Hugonot forces ; and they are joined by the 
Queen of Navarre, and her son Henry — now only fifteen 
years of age — but who when thirty-seven, you will remem- 
ber, became Henry IV — king of France and the Idol of the 
French. 

On the 20th of September a Royal Edict is published — re- 
voking all other Edicts whatsoever regarding the Protestants, 
and prohibiting the exercise of any other Religion in France 
except the Catholic Roman — under pain of death. So war 
begins again — each party being nearly equal in military 
forces — having about 20,000 each of all kinds — French and 
Foreign. The winter is spent miserably in delays and mistakes, 
and the battle of Jarnac is fought on the 12th of March, 1569, 
which the Protestants lose. Here, too, the Prince de Conde is 



GASPAKD DE COLIGNY. ' 417 

killed, and shortly after D' Andelot dies of fever. For a while 
therefore the Protestant cause seems at its lowest. However, 
the aspect of things soon changes again. Henry of Beam is 
elected head of the Protestants, and with him is united Henry 
the son of Conde. The Admiral is nominally their Lieutenant- 
General, but really their Generalissimo. And now they are 
joined, too, by fresh foreign reinforcements — the Due de 
Deuxponts, Mouy, the Prince of Orange, and his brother 
Ludovic of Nassau. Thus they are speedily more numerous 
than ever before in the whole war, having it may be in all 
25,000 men under arms. 

And at this the height of the Admiral's power, he sends 
to the King to offer to open negotiations for Peace and Tolera- 
tion. The King refuses, and soon afterwards publishes an 
arret specially against Coligny which confiscates all his pro- 
perty, declares his children ignoble, and sets a price of 50,000 
crowns upon his head. His castle and estates at Chatillon 
are ravaged — all his furniture destroyed — his plantations cut 
down — and his village of Chatillon, with its many provisions 
of comfort and enlightenment for his people, utterly laid 
waste. But it is said by those who saw much of him at this 
time that none of these things moved him : that no word of 
murmuring dropped from his lips ; that no trace of vexation 
was visible on his countenance. 

And now on the 1st of October, 1569, is fought the battle 
of Moncontour — the most disastrous of all their battles for the 
Protestants, they losing 5000 men : the Admiral, too, being 
severely wounded in the face. The victor here was the Due 
d'Anjou — the favourite son of Catharine — afterwards King of 
Poland and Henry III. of France. This defeat caused quite 
a panic among the Protestants : and connected as it was 
with various other discouragements in other parts, perhaps 
now the Protestant affairs look as discouraging as they had 
only a few months ago looked encouraging. But what is the 

2d 



418 GASPARD DE COLIGNY. 

mind of the Admiral now ? A contemporary speaks thus of 
him : — 

1 The Admiral now saw accumulating round bis head all 
those evils which befall the leaders of the people : blamed 
for every accident : his merits forgotten : his army discon- 
tented and despairing — with two young Princes devoured in 
their property by greedy mercenaries — by some taught to 
censure those to whom the management of affairs was en- 
trusted, by others led to desire a change in order that they 
might conduct things themselves. Surrounded by weakened 
towns — terrified garrisons — foreigners without baggage, him- 
self without money — pursued by an enemy pitiless to all, but 
wholly without mercy for him : he was abandoned by every 
one save by a woman — the Queen Jeanne — who had already 
come to hold out her hand to the afflicted, and assist in re- 
trieving their affairs. This old man, consumed by fever, as 
they carried him in his litter, lay revolving all these bitter 
things, and many others which were gnawing at his heart — 
their sting more grievous than his painful wound — when 
L'Estrange, an aged gentleman, and one of his principal 
counsellors, travelling wounded in the same manner, ordered 
his Utter, when the road widened, to be a little advanced in 
front of the other, and putting forward his head, looked for 
some time fixedly at his chief. Then the tears filling his 
eyes, he turned away with these words, ' Yet God is a sweet 
consolation.' And so they parted, perfectly understanding 
each other's thoughts, though quite unable to utter more. 
But this great captain has been heard to express to his inti- 
mates that this one little word from a friend sufficed to raise 
his broken spirit, and restored him at once to better thoughts 
for the present, and firm resolutions for the future.' 

Had you seen the Admiral the next time he addressed his 
Council — though the loss of his jaw made him feeble of 
utterance — you would not have read in him much faintness 



GASPARD DE COLIGNY. 419 

of heart. He never, indeed, had that singular joyousness of 
spirits which Conde had, but always a serene strength of 
heart which perhaps on the whole was as effective for him- 
self and for others — the settled determination of a man who 
had counted the cost of his cause before he engaged in it, and 
was prepared to pay it to the uttermost. Before the Council 
separated, despatches had been sent off to England and to 
Scotland, to Denmark, Germany, and the Swiss — urging the 
necessity of mutual co-operation, and soliciting fresh suc- 
cours. And altering his policy wholly, he marches to the 
south — some hundreds of leagues — into the very heart of 
those provinces which were the true strength of the Protes- 
tant Cause — to the very foot of the Pyrenees : and by the 
presence of the Princes there, greatly exhilarated the hearts 
of the faithful men of Languedoc. The Admiral spends the 
winter in Languedoc, and here refuses two several offers of 
Peace from the Court — because they will not concede suffi- 
cient Toleration. He begins his march of Return in the 
spring : but soon after it is begun, the Admiral falls ill — so 
ill that all men now fearing his loss feel his value. He gets 
better, however, and is in the field again — at Arnay le Due 
— with a powerful army, before the Catholics are ready to 
meet him. They send 12,000 men to give him battle, but 
these are driven back on the first conflict — Henry of Beam 
acting with distinguished bravery. At Nismes, and in other 
parts too, the Protestants have been and are frequently and 
uniformly successful, having indeed now gained nearly fifty 
towns. The Admiral now marches upon Paris. The King 
sends to offer Peace — on honourable and tolerant conditions : 
among which were these : The Reformed to be allowed two 
towns in every province in addition to those they had already, 
in the fauxbourgs of which liberty of worship should be se- 
cured : to have equality of reception at all Universities and 
Schools, and State Charitable Endowments : to have all their 



420 GASPAED DE COLIGNY. 

privileges restored to the towns which had taken the Protes- 
tant side in this contest : all prisoners of war to be liberated : 
all castles and estates to be restored : all Arrets against the 
Reformed annulled : and as a pledge for the performance of 
these conditions, certain important towns to remain in the 
hands of the Protestants. And besides these, favourable 
terms were secured for the German allies, and the Princi- 
pality of Orange (in France, you know) restored to William of 
Nassau. This Treaty is concluded 8th of August, 1 570, and 
the King comes himself to St Germains and signs it. 

After the signing of the Peace of St Germains, which 
also professes to be irrevocable, there is a calm over all the 
kingdom, a calm of weariness and repose. The Protestants 
make La Rochelle their home. True, the calm is occasion- 
ally broken by popular outrages against them, but now there 
is this favourable difference with regard to them, that the 
persecutors are rebuked by the Royalists, and even two of 
them at Rouen put to death. And the King (who had 
broken off a negotiation for the Infanta of Spain, and who is 
married to Elizabeth, daughter of the more tolerant Maxi- 
milian of Austria), seems following up the Edict in its spirit 
by sending Teligny and Count Ludovic (of Nassau, brother 
of the Prince of Orange) to La Rochelle, to open communi- 
cations with the Admiral concerning an expedition against 
the Duke of Alva in Flanders. And soon after Marshal 
Biron comes to La Rochelle to propose a marriage between 
the Prince of Navarre (Henry of Beam) and the King's 
youngest sister (Margaret of Valois), and also between Mary 
of Cleves and the Prince de Conde : and the King at the 
same time also offers his services with the Duke of Savoy to 
forward the contemplated marriage between the Admiral and 
Jacqueline the daughter of Count D'Enstremont, who had 
large possessions in his dukedom, which she would forfeit if 



GASPARD DE COLIGNY. 421 

she married a Protestant without his consent. The Admiral 
does not much like this exceeding friendliness on the part of 
the King : but he will not doubt the solemnly pledged word 
of his sovereign, nor put his own personal safety in competi- 
tion with the large interests which seem to be here involved 
— most especially as the King also promises to promote a mar- 
riage between his brother D'Anjou and our Queen Elizabeth, 
and the letter is written to Coligny with the King's own 
hand. The negotiations go on for some months, and during 
this time the Admiral marries the daughter of Count D'Ens- 
tremont, but without her possessions ; and gives his daughter 
Louisa in marriage to Teligny. The King continues to de- 
sire to consult with Coligny, and in September he goes to 
meet the King at Blois. The meeting is on one side cer- 
tainly one of great emotion, and it seems to be so on the 
other also. Coligny kneels before the King and takes his 
hand. Charles raises him instantly and repeatedly embraces 
him, cheek pressed to cheek, and hand grasped in hand. The 
King calls Coligny Father, this day henceforth. The Queen- 
Mother and the Due d'Anjou express similar affection, and 
the Admiral seems fully restored to his old position by the 
royal side. The King gives him a hundred thousand crowns 
as a partial reparation for the injury done to his estate, and 
a year's revenue out of the benefices held by his brother the 
Cardinal (who, as the Count de Beauvais, has lately, I fear, 
been poisoned here in England — the first victim of the new 
policy) and grants him pardons for various persons for whom 
he intercedes. 

The Admiral's delight at once more finding himself in his 
right and natural position as a recognised servant of his 
King, manifests itself by an earnestness of counsel and of 
service, and a loyal, trusting self-devotion which is quite 
beautiful, even touching : educing all the true old French 



422 



GASPARD DE COLIGNY. 



nobility of the man, and for a time it would seem quite 
magnetising the King, who says that he has never seen so 
noble-minded a man before. 

The Queen of Navarre now comes to the Court at Blois (in 
March) about the marriage of her son which she greatly dis- 
likes, and which it requires the greatest diplomacy on the 
King's part to negotiate. The marriage articles are, however, 
signed on the 11th of April, and then all come to Paris. 

But on the 9th of June, suddenly, the Queen of Navarre 
dies (not without suspicion of poison) appointing Coligny her 
executor. Notwithstanding, her son is married, on the 18th 
of August, with great apparent reconciliation of all parties. 

On the second morning after the marriage Coligny goes 
to the King to complain to him about certain transgres- 
sions of the Edict of Pacification which had lately taken 
place at Troyes. The King says to him, l My father, 
pray give me four or five days to make merry in, and 
that done I promise you, on the faith of a King, that 
I will satisfy you, and all of your Religion.' For the next 
three days there is nothing but festivity — the celebra- 
tion of the royal marriage — the whole court and city seem- 
ing to be altogether intoxicated with gaiety. On the 22d, 
Coligny is sent for early to the palace to arrange some differ- 
ences between two gentlemen of Burgundy. On his return, 
as he is reading a paper which some one put into his hand 
in the street, he is shot at, and seriously wounded in two 
places, in the left arm and right hand. He is helped to his 
hotel by those about him — he saying nothing, but only 
pointing to the window from which the shot had come. On 
reaching his home he desires that the King may be informed 
of what has happened, and that his wound may be looked to. 
While this is doing the tidings fly far and wide : and while 
they are cutting off the fingers of his right hand — they do it 
cruelly clumsily — the King of Navarre, Prince de Conde, and 



GASPAED DE COLIGNY. 423 

other Protestant chiefs come in, and are much moved to see 
him. Coligny says, ' I have received this wound for the 
Name of God : I esteem myself very happy.' They continue 
to make large incisions in his left arm. His chaplain Merlin 
coming in, Coligny says to him, in the very midst of the 
operation, ' I am indeed sorely wounded, but I feel it to be 
the will of our Lord God, and I thank Him that He so 
favours me as to permit me to suffer for His Holy Name. 
Pray for me, that He may also bestow upon me the grace of 
Perseverance.' And to another he says just after, ' It might 
have been much otherwise : blessed be the Name of God 
who shews such gentleness and clemency towards me — so 
unworthy a servant of His.' Marshal Damville (second son 
of the Constable De Montmorency and not a Protestant) 
comes in, and with his accustomed grace and frankness says, 
' Monsieur, I am not come to console you : I know better 
than to exhort him to constancy and patience who has ever 
been the best example to us all of these — but only to pray 
you to consider of something in which I may serve you,' 
adding, ' I marvel whence this can have come.' The Admiral 
says : ' I suspect none but the Due de Guise : but I do not 
feel sure even here. But by the grace of God I have learned 
not to fear my enemies : they can do me no real harm : the 
worst they can do is to bring me a little sooner to my Eternal 
Rest. I know the God in whom I have trusted : He will 
neither deceive nor lie. I grieve, however, to be deprived of 
the power of shewing my King how greatly I desire to serve 
him. I wish his Majesty might be pleased to listen to me 
for a few moments : there are things which it concerns him 
much to know, and which perhaps no one will tell him if I 
do not.' These words are reported to the King. 

The King goes to visit the Admiral — attended by the 
Queen-Mother, the Dukes of Anjou and Alengon his brothers, 
and by the other gentlemen who were then of his immediate 



424 GASPARD DE COLIGNY. 

suite. After the King had saluted the Admiral affectionately, 
and inquired how he found himself, the Admiral said : ' Sire, 
1 thank you with all possible humility for the honour which 
it pleases your Majesty to do me in coming to see me, and 
for the trouble you are pleased to take on my account.' The 
King, looking alternately sorrowful and indignant, says, ' My 
father, the wound is yours, but the pain is mine : and I will 
take such Vengeance for it as shall never be forgotten.' 
' Sire,' replied Coligny, ' we need not look far to learn who it 
is that has given me this : but may God never be my help if 
I desire vengeance — Justice I feel sure (trusting your equity 
and rectitude) I shall obtain.' And then the Admiral — pro- 
testing in the most solemn manner, as before the King of 
kings, into the presence of whose Holiest Majesty it could 
not be very long before he must enter, that he had never 
been any other than a faithful and devoted servant of the 
King and Kingdom of France — however much he may have 
seemed to be a rebel when he was really only fighting against 
the Guises — proceeded to charge the King most solemnly 
concerning the evils of his government and his breaches of 
faith — saying among many other things, ' You have sworn 
solemnly to keep faith with the Religious, and yet I know 
that in many places of your dominions that faith is shame- 
fully broken — and this, not by private persons only, but 
by your Majesty's own officers and governors. I have 
often spoken to you, Sire, of these things, pointing out 
that the sacred observance of promises is the only se- 
cure bond of peace : and the only means that can by 
possibility restore your kingdom to its ancient splendour and 
dignity.' 'Madam,' turning to the Queen, 'I have also 
sometimes represented the same to you, and yet every day 
fresh complaints are made of murders, outrages, and seditions. 
Not long since, at Troyes, the Catholics murdered a newly- 
baptised infant in its nurse's arms.' Then, raising his voice, 



GASPARD DE COLIGNY. 425 

he said — ' Sire, I entreat you not to overlook these things, but 
to have a true regard to the repose and wellbeing of your 
kingdom, and to the faith you have so solemnly pledged.' How 
the Queen-Mother received the appeal we are not told : or with 
what eye the courtiers regarded the Admiral : but the King, 
it is said (and of these events you must understand we have 
quite authentic details), listened to him with profound atten- 
tion, and when Coligny ceased, answered with every appear- 
ance of cordiality — 'M. l'Amiral, I know you for a man of 
worth — and a good Frenchman — and zealous for the ad- 
vancement of my kingdom : and I hold you for a valiant 
and excellent soldier : had I not done so, I would never have 
done as I have done : I will do as you wish.' Yet more is 
said — the King and Queen having prolonged their visit for 
an hour. The King, after making many inquiries of the 
Admiral's attendants concerning the operation, and the Ad- 
miral's manner of bearing it, and receiving their answers, 
retired, saying — ' I have never seen a man of more magna- 
nimity and resolution than the Admiral.' The next morning 
(Saturday) there is a great stir throughout the city, and par- 
ticularly around the gates of the Admiral's hotel — both of 
Catholics and of Hugonots. The Queen and the Duke of 
Guise are excessively disconcerted at the outburst of feeling 
which this event excites. The King, too, seems most earnest 
in setting on foot investigations into the origin of it : but it 
is now at once revealed to him, that if he pursues these, the 
blow must fall upon the Queen his mother, and the Duke of 
Anjou his brother, as well as upon the Duke of Guise. 
Charles is overwhelmed. And now they work upon the 
mind of the King — a mind never self-guiding, and now 
almost insane with the fearfulness of his position — till they 
get him to listen to a way of getting rid of his difficulties by 
multiplying his crimes. 

And most indescribable is the confusion in Paris this day 



426 GASPARD DE COLIGNY. 

— for if a blow be struck, it must be one which shall ob- 
literate a myriad of men, and it must be sudden. The busy, 
buzzing, swarming of Catholic and Hugonot this day in all 
parts is utterly distracting. People come to warn Coligny. 
The Vidame (Judge) of Chartres in particular, his old friend, 
who has been down in the lowest quarters of the city, tells 
him that there is much movement and excitement there — 
with the strangest expression of countenance in all — with 
portentous deeds and words of the worst omen — and entreats 
his companions to take up the Admiral, all ill as he is, and 
put him in a litter, and get him away anywhither — declaring 
that in this instance he is sure the voice of the People is the 
voice of God. But Coligny will not doubt a King who only 
the day before spoke and listened to him so kindly and so 
cordially. He consents, however, to ask for a few guards to 
stand at his outer gate. The King sends fifty — too many. 
Deeming himself now abundantly well cared for, and dis- 
missing all but Teligny and a few others, he composes 
himself tranquilly for the night. At midnight there is by 
preconcert an immense assemblage of official persons and 
soldiers at the Place de Greve. The Due de Guise appears 
among them and says : c Gentlemen, it is the King's good 
pleasure that we should all take up arms to kill Coligny, and 
extirpate all the other Hugonots and rebels — and the same 
will be done in the provinces. Mind the signal — when the 
clock of the Palais de Justice shall strike upon the Great 
Bell at day-break, let every good Catholic bind a strip of 
white round his arm, and place a white cross upon his cap — 
and begin.' It wants yet an hour and a half of day-break — 
and the passionate vengeance of the Queen will not wait — 
so she commands the tocsin of St Germain l'Auxerrois — 
close upon the Louvre — to be sounded, instead of that of the 
far off Palais. Then, at the unexpected nearness of the 
sound, the King is horror-struck — he sends to the Due 



GASPARD DE C0LIGNY. 427 

de Guise to stop, and not to touch the Admiral. The 
Due de Guise is gone — he is at the Admiral's Hotel — de- 
manding admittance at its outer gates — in the King's name. 
These gates are opened, and in rush slaughterers — fifty — 
even the very guards themselves. Stabbing their way they 
rush up the staircase, through the Swiss, to the Admiral, 
who is forewarned only a few minutes before, and has only 
time to say without hurry to his attendants : i I have long 
been prepared to die — but for you — all of you — save your- 
selves — you can be of no assistance to me. I recommend 
myself to my God.' They burst open the door of the Ad- 
miral's chamber — they find him seated in an arm-chair, with 
a loose robe only around him. One rushes forward with a 
raised sword, shouting, l Are you the Admiral ? ' The reply 
is, * I am — and you ought to respect my gray hairs and my 
wounds — but' — the remaining words are prevented by the 
raised sword being thrust through his body. And then 
others cover him with wounds — barbarously mangling him. 
The Due de Guise cries from below that he wishes to have 
proof that he is dead, and orders his body to be thrown out 
of the window. It is done : and the Due de Guise, wiping 
the blood from the gashed and bleeding face that he may be 
the more sure that it is Coligny's, cries, ' It is he,' and with 
kicks and curses delivers over the body of the Admiral to the 
mob, he the while sallying out of the gates with the cry, 
■ Courage, soldiers ! we have begun well, now for the others.' 
! The others ' — Ten Thousand are they who are thus begin- 
ning to be murdered on this fearful Sunday — not men only, 
but women and children — the wholly helpless, the wholly 
guiltless — every Catholic man slaying his Protestant neigh- 
bour, and thinking the while that he is doing God service. 
For seven long days and nights is Paris now one human 
slaughter-house — its streets running down with blood — its 
river choked up with corpses. And in the Provinces, too, the 



428 GASPARD DE C0LIGNY. 

insane fury of slaughter rages, as the Due de Guise had said 
it would. In Meaux, Orleans, Troyes, Bourges, Rouen, 
Nevers, Toulouse, Bourdeaux — above all at Lyons — for two 
months multitudes are being massacred, and blood poured 
out as water. The Due de Sully says, Seventy Thousand 
perished in all. 

And in the midst of it in Paris — on Tuesday the 26th — the 
King and his whole family, and all the Catholic nobles who 
can be spared from the sacrificing, go to Pray in Public and 
offer thanksgiving to God for the success He has vouchsafed 
to the measures they have taken for His glory. And then 
they assemble the Parliament and tell them that the Admiral 
had formed a conspiracy to murder the King, and his brothers, 
and the Queen-Mother, and the whole House of Valois — and 
then to put the Prince de Conde on the Throne, until he 
should find a fitting opportunity to seize upon it, and sit up- 
on it himself. And the Parliament say they believe it all, 
and thank the King for what he has done for God and for 
them, and apply in his honour the saying of Louis XL, ' He 
who knows not how to dissemble knows not how to reign.' 
And then they proceed to decree that the body of the Sieur 
de Coligny shall be dragged through the streets, and after- 
wards hung up on Montfaucon to the execration of the people : 
that his ensigns and arms and armouries shall be broken and 
destroyed in token of perpetual infamy : that his castle of 
Chatillon shall be levelled to the ground, and all about it 
rendered a waste : that his children shall be declared ignoble 
and incapable of holding any property : and finally, that in all 
years to come there shall be public Prayers and Processions 
in Paris, as a memorial of this Twenty-fourth of August — 
this now twice-blessed Feastday of St Bartholomew. 

And not only Paris but also Rome exults : not only the 
distant members of the great Catholic Body, but its very 
Head and Heart. The Pope has a grand Procession, too, for 



GASPAED DE COLIGNY. 429 

Thanksgiving, and walks in it himself with all his Cardinals 
and Clergy ; and there are Masses and Music, and Sermons 
and Fireworks — irrepressible overflowing joy, as for some 
Crowning Mercy. 

And so now here we must leave the matter — the Righteous 
slain, and their enemies triumphing over them openly — hut 
leave it in full faith that as yet we have not seen the End. 

And now a few words, and only a very few, on the times 
in which Coligny lived, and on Coligny himself. To me, I 
must confess, that the whole aspect of these times of struggle 
in France is one of exceeding melancholy. That after fifteen 
centuries of grace the French nation should have been so 
little Christianised as it was, this surely is sad enough : but 
that the French Church, which had been so many centuries 
established in that country, with privileges perhaps greater 
than those vouchsafed to any other church on earth, should 
itself have been so unchristian, this surely is still more sad. 
Persecution and bigotry at all times are odious, but that pre- 
valent in France in these times was not merely as the igno- 
rant cruelty of dark ages and an uncultured people — but it 
was all this co-existing with a very advanced civilization, 
and in despite of, or rather in resistance to, a purer and better 
standard evidently set forth before them. There can really 
be nothing superior — much less exclusively Divine — in a 
system which, having sovereign sway and ample resources, in 
the course of fifteen centuries has made the people of any 
country no more moral or religious — no more Humane or 
Christian — than were the people of France in the days of 
Henry the Second or Charles the Ninth. 

And surely this whole history teaches us that it is needful 
at all times to diffuse principles of Religious Liberty : that 
Persecution for Religion's sake is the most natural to man, 
while Toleration is only the slow growth of a maturely Chris- 
tianised estate. And this alone would be with me sufficient 



430 GASPARD DE COLIGNY. 

to condemn the Church of Rome as a most perverted exhibi- 
tion of the Religion of Christ — as merely a Judaising 
Christianity or a Christianised Judaism — that these sins of 
Inhumanity are not mere abuses : but are inwrought in its 
whole constitution. The histories of its long-sustained action 
during all the years of the earlier struggles of the Reforma- 
tion in the various countries of Europe, are uniform and 
accumulated witnesses that Persecution is a part of its policy. 
Truly in these times we see that Persecution is not a sin of 
its members merely but of its Head as well — not a mere 
remnant of the law of the natural or Pagan man in it, warring 
against the law of its better Christian mind — but the delibe- 
rate and repeatedly recognised principle of its whole vital 
system. Both before and after these times too — in France, 
and Spain, and Italy, and Germany and the Low Countries 
— at all times and in all places of its dominion in fact — it 
has persecuted on Principle, and its greater atrocities — as that 
of the St Bartholomew — have been not repented of, but gloried 
in : no Protestant voice has ever issued from the great Body 
— no tear, no sigh, during all its long course of inhumanity 
and blood, but even the very insanest barbarities of its 
agents have been deliberately approved and applauded by its 
Infallible Head. And herein is a very great difference be- 
tween Protestant and Catholic Persecution. Alas, Protest- 
ants have persecuted — I admit it, sorrowfully and with con- 
fusion of face — they have persecuted whose very Creed is 
founded upon the rights of Conscience, and whose very 
Charter is the Pledge of Toleration. But herein lies the 
difference as I have said, that Protestants persecute in con- 
tradiction to their principles, and the persecutions of indivi- 
duals have ever been protested against and disowned and 
denounced by the Body at large, and in proportion as they 
have been sanctioned by many of one age, have come to be 



GASPAKD DE COLIGNY. 431 

regarded by all succeeding ones with correspondingly large 
horror and abomination. 

And now of Coligny himself I have to say that I think 
him one of the finest characters of modern history, and a 
very admirable specimen of that peculiar product of Christi- 
anity and civilization combined which we name a gentleman 
— a man in the groundwork of whose character are deeply 
laid integrity and veracity, calmness and courage : with a 
spirit of loyalty to all above him, and power to govern all 
below : without ambition and without vanity ; self-sufficing, 
equably cultured : conspicuous for nothing in particular, but 
admirable as a whole : notable chiefly for the absence of what 
the vulgar have : illustrious only for his honour. Such was 
Coligny — a French nobleman, and other and more ; for truly 
Coligny does not strike one, I think, as characteristically 
French : more as European : he was nobly patriotic indeed, 
with a quick instinct of honour, and most gracefully polished : 
but he was by no means mercurial, voluble, or volatile: 
indeed, there was no high, sense of enjoyment in him, no 
humour : little gaiety of any kind : and he was religious 
and reserved without being either a formalist or a diploma- 
tist. Indeed, he presents us with a remarkable union of 
qualities: a Frenchman without vivacity: devotedly loyal, 
and yet declared by his King a Rebel : a most vigorous sol- 
dier, and yet above all things hating "War : an eminent 
negotiator, and yet no man more straightforward : his whole 
life a continuous struggle to render faithfully unto Csesar the 
things which then were Caesar's, but to God first the things 
that are always His. 

A wholly intelligible character, however, though seeming 
compound, for the things of Csesar were then opposed to the 
things of God, and War was the only path to Peace. How- 
ever it may have been with others, with Coligny (and I 
would add with the whole Brotherhood of Chatillon — the 



432 GASPAED DE C0LIGNY. 

finest Triumvirate I know of in history) Liberty to worship 
God according to conscience was the single aim of all his 
public life. ' If we have our Religion what more do we 
want ? ' was a memorable saying of his which is, I think, a 
faithful index of his whole course and character. Unwillingly 
drawn, or rather driven, into civil war — always ready to lay 
down his arms at the first prospect of such a peace as might 
secure the undisturbed exercise of his religion — believing 
almost to credulity, and even eventually losing his life from 
his unwillingness to distrust, the word of his King — it was 
from no love of strife and from no self-seeking that he en- 
gaged in a contest which he believed from the first could be 
in no worldly way successful for him — but wholly and solely 
— so far as authentic history can assure us — for the main- 
tenance of a Cause which was dearer to him than life — a 
cause which he believed to be the cause of God and man 
— the cause of Evangelical Truth. And there never was a 
man who came out of a Religious War so little injured in his 
own spirit as Coligny; to the very last, as at first, he was 
unstained by any spot of selfishness : of the purest habits of 
life, of uncompromising faithfulness. Throughout his whole 
course indeed — in the times of his greatest prosperity — he 
never sought any honours for himself — they were always 
1 forced upon him through his sufficiency and wisdom : ' and 
he was at all times equally without pretension and parade : 
a simply living, nobly daring, much enduring man. Verily 
a very finely constituted, well developed man : characteristi- 
cally and by choice the Head of a Christian household and 
estate, but proving equally fitted for the Armed Leader of 
Protestantism: a man naturally as mild and retiring and 
genial as any, and yet on the call of duty a Defender of the 
Faith who can be conquered by nothing but his own incre- 
dulity of other men's wickedness — a Champion of a Cause so 



GAStARD DE COLIGNY. 433 

bold as not to be driven from the field but by being mas- 
sacred while unarmed. 

Such was Coligny — to me, I confess, the noblest man I 
have met with in the whole history of France, and one 
whom I commend to your better acquaintance, with the sure 
confidence that he will in such case commend himself in- 
creasingly to your Admiration and your Love. 



2e 



GEORGE WASHINGTON. 



I had intended, when I began these Lectures on Great MeD, 
to speak to you only of such as had lived in Christendom 
from the beginning of the Fourteenth to the end of the 
Seventeenth Centuries : but once already I have trans- 
gressed these limits, in order that I might not omit all men- 
tion of so large a portion of the great Human Family as 
that which first began to be embraced within Modern 
Christendom only in the beginning of the Eighteenth century 
— the great Empire of Russia; and now again I have 
thought it well — more especially as I purpose that this shall 
be the last Lecture for some time on Great Men — not to 
omit some specimen of the superior products of that great 
Continent of our Descendants — America — distinguished as it 
is for so many manly virtues and so many Christian graces. 
And of all the notable Men of Action whom it has produced, 
it seems to me that the one whom it will most profit us 
to consider is one whose whole history lies within the 
Eighteenth century — beginning in it early and just closing 
with its close — George "Washington. And his story, I 
think, may in some respects be peculiarly profitable to us : 
for it is the story of a man whose greatness is of all men's 



GEORGE WASHINGTON. 435 

the most imitable — not a greatness of gifts but of virtues 
— not of Genius but of Character. Indeed, perhaps there 
never was a man who has occupied so large a share 
in the world's history, or been so conspicuous in the eyes 
of so many of his contemporaries, who has possessed so 
little that was intellectually splendid, or in any other 
way than morally attractive. Truly he cannot be dazzling 
even to the weakest eye, and to a many keen one he 
must be absolutely dull ; but seeing that the work which 
he did was substantially good and great, for this very reason 
of his want of splendour I think that it may be well for us 
to try and learn to appreciate him: and I for my part at 
once declare that I think our historic taste will have become 
unhealthy, if we cannot give him cordially a large share of 
our admiration amid the Great Men not only of America, 
but also of Christendom, and even of the World. 

But before I speak of Washington I must speak one word 
of that American War of which you know he was the most 
conspicuous Leader. Then at once I must say that this 
American War is one to me not of the most interesting 
kind : it is one in which there was but a scanty preponde- 
rance of real nobleness on one side, and a vast amount of 
inferiority on both. It was a war wholly about civil rights, 
and very principally merely about money rights : or to state 
it in its highest sounding phrase, it was a war for the vin- 
dication of the Principle of Representative Taxation. Now 
to me, I must at once confess, that a war of this kind — or of 
any kind like this — however accidentally noble it may be, is 
essentially far from the noblest. War is a miserable thing 
at best — quite of doubtful obligation upon Christian men (as 
I think), save in the case of civil and religious injustice 
combined : but a war for any thing that left the Conscience 
untouched, and such a large remainder of Civil Liberty as 
the Americans had, and so many means of continually gain- 



436 GEORGE WASHINGTON. 

ing more, is to me so ambiguous a matter, that if I can con- 
sent to speak of it without reprobation, I cannot consent to 
speak of it with enthusiasm. But if one must pronounce 
which were the less to blame in this war — the English or 
the Americans — I at once say, the Americans. The Ame- 
rican War appears to me all throughout — in its origin and 
its conduct, as much as in its conclusion — a disgrace to the 
English nation : and when we remember the arguments that 
were adduced for it, and the arguments against it which 
were negatived, by so many of the more privileged classes of 
our people, and how popular it was with nearly all classes — 
one may well be humbled in our estimate of our national 
Conscience (as it is called) and national character : as in 
this case the conduct of the English people was neither 
honourable nor reasonable ; not noble nor just nor wise : in 
no way admirable, altogether selfish. But then again, as it 
seems to me, there was but small popular elevation on the 
American side : nothing very great at first, and this little 
even growing gradually ever less and less, until as the war 
drags its slow length along one feels exhausted with weari- 
ness at its monotony, wherever one is not excited to indig- 
nation by its pettiness. One cannot help feeling, when one 
goes thrcfugh the history of it, as if one were fighting all 
along on a kind of moral morass — a boundless continuity of 
flat — a laborious, foggy, chilly battle-ground of swamp. It 
really was no popular cause at first, but only that of a Few 
— we will say, of the more enlightened : it was a war urged 
upon the great majority by theoretic politicians, and sup- 
ported by that majority from first to last with no prodigality' 
of patriotism, and no exuberance of self-devotion. But if I 
cannot speak with much enthusiasm either of the war itself 
or of the popular spirit by which it was supported — with 
nothing of that glow of heart with which one cannot but 
speak of the men of Switzerland or of the Low Countries, or 



GEORGE WASHINGTON. 437 

those of Cromwell's time or of Coligny's — yet this may be 
said, that to be with Washington a while even in these dull, 
dismal, drizzling campaigns of his, is in some respects 
agreeable after having been of late as we have been in the 
wars in Italy and Spain and France. The very coldness is 
refreshing after those sultry heats ; and dreary as the country 
is — and heavy and unaccomplished as the men are — yet they 
are thoroughly honest, truthful, brave men : men not free 
from petty prejudices and pecuniary meannesses — but wholly 
free from that insane passion, and iniquitous savagery and 
deceit, which we have had so much to do with in the perse-, 
cuting populations of old Catholic Europe. 

And also, in forming my judgments about this war, I would 
have you understand that they are not influenced by any 
regrets which I entertain for the loss of what were termed our 
American Colonies. On the contrary I am very well pleased 
that they are Independent, for I think that Colonies ought 
not for ever to be in physical or legal subjection to the nation 
from which they originally have sprung, and that in this 
case a century and a half might well suffice for their mino- 
rity. Ultimate separation in this sense there ought to be, 
in order that Colonies themselves may become Nations, and 
give birth to colonial children of their own, and have the 
freedom of action which is necessary for the discharge of the 
parental duties corresponding. Indeed this common and 
favourite language which speaks of the old State as the 
' Parent,' and the Colonies as ' Children,' I think is most just 
and wise — and more happy than such language generally is 
— much less of a fiction than any other political or social 
similitude I know of ; But surely if so, then I may say, that 
as children become (when arrived at years of discretion) in a 
considerable sense, and altogether physically, independent of 
their parents, so ought colonies. New sentiments and new 
duties arise from the possession of the new capabilities 



438 GEORGE WASHINGTON. 

developed by growth and age, and these require a certain 
independence of position for their discharge. The sense of 
Personality ever brings with it that of Responsibility, and 
this demands a large measure of self-government. Uncon- 
ditional submission can only of right be required from the 
imbecility and inexperience of Infancy : and as these are 
gradually supplanted by powers of self-guidance and self- 
support, the bonds of Rule should be proportionately relaxed, 
and moral forces be substituted for physical. Reverence, 
gratitude, and affection — these are the influences which 
alone can rightly bind the grown man : and though they be 
of quite imperfect obligation, mechanically considered, yet 
they would be found, I believe, the more efficient the more 
they should be trusted. But whether this be so, or be not 
so, it is as a matter of fact impossible to bind a continually 
growing nation with any other bonds for ever : and no nation 
can reasonably expect to do so, seeing that there is no nation 
on earth now existing in a state of freedom which has not in 
its own histoiy afforded all others a precedent for breaking 
asunder the earliest bonds by which it was held to its pro- 
genitors. And truly, though I care little enough — less 
perhaps than I ought — about the details of the political 
history of the present or the future — I do desire to see that 
history ruled by more generous principles than it ever has 
been hitherto. I desire to see the world full of free nations 
— mankind a great Family and Household constituted of 
self-governing members related to each other principally by 
voluntary ties — those of affection, and of honour, and of 
mutual service. May national selfishness perish, and the 
whole world become a commonwealth of interdependent na- 
tions ! And especially let England be foremost of the nations 
in the good work of promoting the spirit of Human Brother- 
hood. Let England rejoice to diffuse her own happiness and 
her own privileges among all who are willing to receive them, 



GEORGE WASHINGTON. 439 

and fitted to enjoy them ; and then I am sure that her virtue 
will be its own reward. Yes, the more countries in the world 
England makes like herself, the more happy and the more 
prosperous will she herself be. So long as we are needful to 
our Colonies, let them have our help on such conditions as 
can be fairly arranged, but let those conditions always anti- 
cipate and provide for Ultimate Independence : and when 
they come to years of self-support, let us set them up in the 
world, not grudgingly nor of necessity, but as we do our 
children, with our best wishes at the least, and a patrimony 
of good principles. And then let us trust to them henceforth 
rather as friends than as subjects — as reasonable, and it may 
be grateful, allies rather than as anything else. Such I con- 
ceive is the Christian view of the matter : and I believe that 
even as a matter of worldly interest we should always gain 
'more by a country's commerce than we shall by its tribute, 
and that an unrestricted interchange of each people's appro- 
priate products and gifts will be ever the most certain source 
of their mutual benefit. 

But now of Washington : and the best thing I think which 
I can do with regard to him will be to confine your attention 
as much as possible to that period of his life which was en- 
gaged in his country's service, and to pass over all else but 
slightly : for it was really only in the period when he was 
Commander-in-Chief of the American army, and President of 
the United States, that there was anything in his history 
which can well live in your memory. And even here the 
best course to take, I think, will be not to attempt a minute 
display of the incidents of his active life (which you can get 
from the commonest sources) but to recall to your recollec- 
tion a mere outline of these, and fill it in with some exhibi- 
tions of his thoughts and feelings at some of its most critical 
points, as they have been bequeathed to us by himself. And 
certainly these accounts of his mind and heart thus given do 



440 GEORGE WASHINGTON. 

come to us with as great an assurance of their genuineness 
as any records of any man's mind do. For whatever other 
qualities of greatness were wanting in Washington, all men 
will agree that there was in him a truthfulness and honesty, 
a simplicity and sincerity and manly modesty, rarely to be 
met with. His words were the exact impressions of his 
thoughts and feelings — unexaggerated. uncoloured — his very 
style being a counterpart of his nature — uncultured, calm, 
and strong : always ponderous, sometimes pedantic, but if 
seldom elegant, never ambiguous. You cannot, however, 
rightly appreciate what "Washington was at the height of his 
history unless you bear in mind how he became what he 
was. He was the son, you will remember, of a ' Statesman ' 
in Westmoreland, Virginia, and born in 1732, and brought 
up to be a land-surveyor. He had very little schooling while 
a boy, and no literary culture ever afterwards. He never at 
any time was remarkable for any kind of liberal attainment 
or taste, but always from earliest years was a most metho- 
dical, pains-taking, praiseworthy person of business ; excel- 
ling in land-measuring and account-keeping, and all sober 
and prudent pursuits : with considerable love, however, of 
bodily activity, and all kinds of field exercise. His first 
public employment — that of negotiator with the French at 
Ohio — gave him great opportunity of displaying his love of 
enterprise, and his superior practical judgment in difficult 
matters of business : and gave such satisfaction to his em- 
ployers that he was immediately employed again in a small 
military operation against the French (in 1754) — which, 
though more distinguished by prudence than by success, pro- 
cured him the thanks of his fellow burgesses of Virginia. 
But shortly after, in consequence of some regulations from 
the War Department which he deemed unjust, and incon- 
sistent with the honour of a soldier to conform to, he resigned 
his commission, and betook himself to the management of a 



GEORGE WASHINGTON. 441 

considerable estate which had come to him lately by his elder 
brother's death — that Mount Vernon so much hereafter asso- 
ciated with his name. But after farming a while he receives 
an invitation from a British officer of great experience — 
General Braddock — to accompany him as his aide-de-camp 
in an expedition against the French to the Ohio (where he 
had been before, as I have said, and therefore where his local 
knowledge might prove of great service) : and he accepts it, 
and repairs to Fort Cumberland where the General was, and 
commences eagerly his duty. Here he suddenly falls danger- 
ously ill of fever : but he will insist on being carried in a 
litter with the troops, and actually, all ill as he is, engages 
in that fatal battle (of Monongahela) in which the British 
General and so many British officers are killed : and here 
displays so much vigour and coolness that the very remnants 
of his strength seem to have been of more avail than the 
fulness of the strength of those with whom he was associated. 
And so conscious did the authorities of his native county 
now seem to be of this superiority, that on his return they 
gave him (August 1755) a commission which constituted 
him Commander of all the forces then raised, or to be raised, 
in Virginia, with the power of naming his own field-officers. 

This honourable commission was no sinecure, but rather 
involving as much harassing labour as even a Washington 
could bear. He had to defend a frontier of three hundred 
and fifty miles of wild country with a mere handful of troops : 
less than a thousand men : and these troops wholly undisci- 
plined, inadequately fed, and irregularly paid. You may 
imagine how bad things were from tne first with him when, 
writing in April 1756, after enumerating the miseries of his 
condition, he says, 'These things cause me to lament the 
hour that gave me a commission, and would induce me at 
any other time than this of imminent danger, to resign with- 
out one hesitating moment, a command from which I never 



442 GEORGE WASHINGTON. 

expect to reap either honour or benefit.' But little is done to 
better this state : and for three years he discharged the duties 
of his commission with an uniformity of fortitude, amid in- 
cessant harass from his superiors and his troops, which it is 
difficult for us to conceive who are acquainted only with 
regular armies : and in this service it was, perhaps, that he 
learned the rudiments and the habits of that singular self- 
command which afterwards he so conspicuously displayed 
under a similar series of trials of incomparably greater mag- 
nitude. In spite, however, of all the obstacles which were 
presented by the ignorance and obstinacy of the officers, the 
neglect of the legislature, and the want of discipline of the 
troops — but as much by other causes as by the merits of the 
American army — this campaign against the French came 
to a favourable conclusion, and Washington resigned his 
commission, and retired into the tranquillity of private life 
(1758). 

And presently we find him taking a seat in the House of 
Burgesses of Virginia, and married, and by the union of his 
wife's large estates with his own, one of the greatest land- 
owners in America. He has indeed more than ten thousand 
acres of land in his own management, and his domestic and 
farming establishments — including slaves — amount to nearly 
a thousand persons. And in considering the character of 
"Washington, you must bear these things well in mind : for 
this farming element in him mingles itself largely with all 
the rest. He always prefers it to everything else ; and says 
of this kind of life, in a very characteristic way ' It is 
honourable, it is amusing, and with judicious care it is pro- 
fitable.' To him it was profitable, I think, mentally and 
morally as well as otherwise : for not only did his acres tend 
to keep him steady amid his honours, and lighten for him 
somewhat the burden of his labours, but they also kept his 
whole nature ever healthy, and well exercised — always in 



GEORGE WASHINGTON. 443 

close communion with fact, and in acquaintance with the 
needs and wishes, the tastes and capabilities, of many varie- 
ties of men. And so here he lives now — for fourteen years 
— at Mount Vernon — a life active yet tranquil, full of interest 
but void of anxiety : the very type of an American first-rate 
landowner, and slave-holding tobacco-planter : the judge of 
a County Court : a member of the State Council : given to 
hospitality and yet much more given to business : and caus- 
ing to flow all around him — by a most methodical irrigation 
indeed, but yet liberally — streams of justice and of charity 
which fertilised an extensive region. 

But the quarrel with England takes place in 1773, and a 
County Convention and a Continental Congress are formed, 
in both of which Washington takes part : and by this latter 
Washington is unanimously elected Commander-in-Chief of 
the forces of the United Colonies. It is from this time — 
when he first had supreme power given him — that his singu- 
lar greatness appears, though that greatness is but a higher 
degree of the same kind of qualities which he before had 
largely exercised — Prudence unparalleled, Patience greater 
than any difficulties, and Fortitude quite unconquerable. 

The operations of the eight years' war I am not going to 
detail to you : I only wish you to remark some of its pecu- 
liarities as far as they affect the character of Washington. 
One of these peculiarities was, that Washington had to con- 
stitute his army out of the roughest materials — almost to 
create it. At the commencement of the war the country 
(which hitherto had been supplied chiefly from England) was 
destitute of ammunition and every material which is charac- 
teristic of military life. And there were not even the tools 
to make them with in the country : and to the very last it 
was but as yeomanry service, where every man brought what 
he could, with small help from Government, and without 
either uniform or uniformity. Besides all this there was one 



444 GEORGE WASHINGTON. 

special trouble which Washington had to struggle against, 
which no other general on record ever had, I believe, which 
was this : That his army was subject to a series of periodical 
legal desertions: his soldiers being all raised on short enlist- 
ments (chiefly for one year) by different authorities on diffe- 
rent conditions : so that the recruit had scarcely been broken 
into ordinary discipline before he was entitled to his dis- 
charge, and availed himself of it. An army without arms, 
without discipline, and without uniforms — with uncertain 
and insufficient food and pay — ever disbanding and recruiting 
— this was Washington's instrument — wherewith to achieve 
independence for his country, and a lasting memory for 
himself. And this he did with this instrument nevertheless. 
It is almost inconceivable to us, indeed, that a country 
engaged in such an enormous quarrel, and meaning to main- 
tain their side of it to the last, should thus have acted ; but 
the more you are astonished at the unheroic character of the 
legislative and civil powers of the community, the more you 
ought in justice to add to the greatness of the character of 
Washington. 

Washington in a communication to Congress, 4th of Janu- 
ary, 1776, says: ' It is not in the pages of History to furnish 
a case like ours. To maintain a post within musket-shot of 
the enemy, for six months together, without ammunition, 
and at the same time to disband one army and to recruit 
another within that distance of twenty British regiments, is 
more probably than ever was attempted.' But this Washing- 
ton did, and much more than this : and that for Seven Years. 
And the occasions on which he can say something in favour 
of these troops he seizes with a readiness which displays him 
in an admirable point of view. For instance, after entering 
Boston and being thanked for it, he writes to the Congress 
of them, — ' They were indeed at first a band of undisciplined 
husbandmen, but it is, under God, to their bravery and 



GEORGE WASHINGTON. 445 

attention to their duty that I am indebted for that success 
which has procured me the only reward I wish to receive — 
the affection and esteem of my countrymen.' 

I shall not dwell upon the military exploits of Washington, 
on his bravery and his powers of command : not only because 
I do not understand very distinctly their characteristic merits, 
but also because all kinds of military virtues seem lavishly 
distributed among men. There has been no country and no 
age of the world in which there has been any scarcity of 
people that can fight. But men who have been so much 
more than good soldiers as Washington was, are rare in 
the world's history — men so patient, so self-possessed, so 
thoroughly patriotic. Washington at any moment of his 
seven years' trial might have retired into private life and 
luxury : there were many anxious to succeed him, even 
plotting to supplant him. He had to do with an ungenerous 
government, and jealous councillors, and an insubordinate 
soldiery, and nothing whatever but the Conscience of Duty 
to keep him steady to his post. 

You will recollect that on the 4th of July, 1776, it was re- 
solved in Congress, ' That the United Colonies are, and of 
right ought to be, free and independent States : and that all 
political connexion between them and the State of Great 
Britain, is, and ought to be, wholly dissolved.' The Decla- 
ration of Independence, as it is called, was signed this day : 
a document most illustrative of American character, but on 
which at present I can say no more than that it is like that 
character — of high value but not of the highest : and that 
AVashington on the reception of the Declaration wrote to the 
President of the Congress, ' It is certain that it is not with 
us to determine in many instances what consequences will 
flow from our councils : but yet it behoves us to adopt such 
as, under the smiles of a most gracious and all-kind Provi- 
dence, will be most likely to promote our happiness ; and I 



446 GEORGE WASHINGTON. 

trust the late decisive part they have taken is calculated for 
that end, and will secure us that freedom and those privi- 
leges which have been and are refused us, contrary to the 
voice of nations and the British Constitution.' 

And so Washington goes on patiently again with this 
wearisome war: and in the December of this year — the 
most gloomy time of all this period of it, applies for addi- 
tional powers, saying, in answer to anticipated objections, 
'Desperate diseases require desperate remedies, and with 
truth I declare, that I have no lust after power, but wish 
with as much fervency as any man upon the wide extended 
Continent for an opportunity of turning the sword into a 
ploughshare. But my feelings as an officer and a man have 
been such as to force me to say, that no person ever had a 
greater choice of difficulties to contend with than I have.'' 
He gets the fresh powers he asks for : and some considerable 
successes follow this his investment with them : but the in- 
cessant change of troops arising from the system of only 
annual enlistments, and the miserably mean manner in which 
both the officers and men were provided for by the Govern- 
ment, bore down again the upward tendency of the successes 
of Trenton and Princeton, and all was for long as before — 
petty triumphs, large defeats, marchings backwards. 

And for years there goes on this dreary tale of multiplied 
meannesses on the part of the many, and of singular patience 
on the part of Washington : the disbanding and re-organ- 
ising of the army he commanded every year — the clashing 
of provincial with general authority — the diversity of ad- 
ministrations — the deficiency of supplies — the irregularities 
of pay — never ceasing embarrassments, more difficult to be 
overcome than the directest engagement with the enemy. 
But Washington enacted prodigies of patience. The ratifi- 
cation of a treaty with France in 1770 inspirited for a while 
the men under Washington's command : but as the General 



GEORGE WASHINGTON. 447 

himself was not depressed under reverses, so now he is not 
elated by Hope : and from the jealousies and intrigues of 
those who wished to supplant him by the successful com- 
mander of the northern campaign (General Gates) he had 
need of all that calmness and firmness which he possessed. 
The deficiency of his army, too, in food and clothing con- 
tinued as great as ever — so much so indeed as to threaten 
the entire dissolution of it — the effective troops being less 
than one-third of the whole. But in the summer of this 
year there comes the promised help from France. New pro- 
jects arise from this French alliance for an expedition against 
Canada : which Washington most earnestly deprecates, and 
uses all his influence to prevent, and ultimately succeeds in 
doing so. But again and again come all the troubles of dis- 
banding and recruiting : all the vexations arising from the 
exercise of the independent authorities of thirteen differing 
States in forming this federal army, and now also the addi- 
tional distress of a depreciated currency. And here how 
boldly and firmly Washington speaks of and for his army to 
the Congress, and how kindly and gently to them, is very 
notable. Writing to one of his principal officers at this time 
(remember the fifth year of the war) he says : 'We have 
lately had the virtue and patience of the army put to the 
severest test. Sometimes it has been five or six days to- 
gether without bread : at other times as many days without 
meat : and once we lived two or three days without either. 
I hardly thought it possible at one period that we should be 
able to keep it together. At one time the soldiers ate every 
kind of horse food but hay — they bore it with most heroic 
patience — it did not excite a single mutiny.' And things 
now grew worse, not better. Congress was bankrupt : and 
the votes of supplies for the army depended upon the wills of 
the thirteen independent and inharmonious States — a com- 
plication of affairs wholly disastrous to military operations. 



448 GEORGE WASHINGTON. 

But nothing was done — only promises given. At length 
there was a partial mutiny in March 1781. The English 
army, presuming on this miserable state of things, attacked 
and annoyed the Americans. Again, and again, and again, 
did Washington urge the Congress to improve the condition 
of the army : and towards the end of the year, the Congress, 
finding these repeated remonstrances supported by the chas- 
tisements of experience, did promise to adopt a permanent 
"War Establishment. But still little was done : and there 
was the most serious mutiny that had yet taken place, the 
next spring : a mutiny caused wholly by hunger and naked- 
ness — by the withholding both of provisions and of pay. 
Indeed, such scenes of beggary and of wretchedness among 
the troops of a civilised, or indeed of any other nation, as 
were characteristic of these years of the American War, his- 
tory knows not of. The proximate reasons of this are easily 
enough to be understood — the accumulated jealousies of thir- 
teen colonies all distrustful of each other to a most singular 
extent, and the absence of any central coercive authority (for 
you must remember that the Congress could really only make 
recommendations, not laws — it had no power to execute 
what it decreed) : but it is difficult to understand (consis- 
tently with one's respect for the American people of that 
generation) the anterior reasons why they did not subordinate 
their jealousies to their army's welfare, and did not create 
earlier, as they did afterwards, a constitutional authority 
binding equally upon all those who had an equal share in 
the great benefits of that army's success. The difficulties and 
impatience, however, which we feel on a mere retrospect of 
these things being so great, may at least enable us the better 
to understand what it was that Washington had daily for 
long years, as a matter of life and death, to struggle with, 
and consequently the better to appreciate those tasks of Pa- 
tience and of Persuasion he had at this time to achieve. I 



GEORGE WASHINGTON. 449 

say of Persuasion as well as Patience, for now it had come 
to this — that he had not merely to command an army, but to 
argue with it : he had to beseech it to keep itself together : to 
treat it as a Popular Assembly, and make speeches to it almost 
every day — think of that. How grieved he was at this state of 
things his letters shew : how undaunted he was is shewn by 
that army's growing success. For now, by the help of the 
French, Washington gains a great triumph over Lord Corn- 
wallis, compelling him to sign a Treaty on the 17 th of October, 
1781, very highly honourable to the Revolutionary cause. 
Indeed, this was the most brilliant event of Washington's 
military career : and was esteemed by him of such especial 
importance that in his general orders he desires all the troops 
under his command, and not on duty, to attend Divine Ser- 
vice on the morrow of the victory, as he said, ' with a serious 
deportment, and that sensibility of heart which the recollec- 
tion of the surprising and particular interposition in our favour 
demands.' And the Congress appoint the 30th of December 
as a day of Public Thanksgiving and Prayer. 

In the beginning, however, of the next year (1782) the 
state of the army is again so bad that in May there is an 
extensive mutiny, and a large part of it offers to make Wash- 
ington Dictator of America. He rejects the proposal with 
abhorrence, and reprehends it with severity. 

But now Peace comes into view : the Provisional Treaty 
is indeed being signed : but it is not until December, 1783, 
that Washington can resign his office of Commander-in- 
Chief. 

I extract two small passages from his last letter and last 
speech to the Congress on this occasion. 

I I have now freely disclosed what I wished to make known 
before I surrendered my public trust to those who committed 
it to me — my task is now accomplished. I now bid a last 
farewell to the cares of office, and all the employments of 

2 F 



450 GEORGE WASHINGTON. 

public life; and I make it my earnest 

prayer, that God would have you, and the State over which 
you preside, in His holy protection : that He would incline 
the hearts of the citizens to cultivate a spirit of subordina- 
tion and obedience to government — to entertain a brotherly 
affection for one another ; for their fellow-citizens of the 
United States at large, and particularly for their brethren 
who have served in the field ; and, finally, that He would 
most graciously be pleased to dispose us all to do justice, 
to love mercy, and to demean ourselves with that charity, 
humility, and pacific temper of mind, which were the charac- 
teristics of the Divine Author of our Blessed Religion : with- 
out an humble imitation of whose Example in these things 
we can never hope to be a happy nation.' 

' I consider it as an indispensable duty to close this last 
solemn act of my official life, by commending the interests of 
our dearest country to the protection of Almighty God, and 
those who have the superintendence of them to His holy 
keeping. Having now finished the work assigned me, I 
retire from the great theatre of action — and here offer my 
commission, and take my leave of all the employments of 
public life.' 

The delight with which "Washington returned to private 
life is very vividly manifested in those of his private letters 
which have been published relating to this time, and his re- 
tirement was for a while unbroken but by tokens of respect 
from corporations and individuals — which, however, were so 
numerous as to be occasionally oppressive. Now for four 
years or more he betakes himself again to Farming — years 
which in public affairs were a dreary time of barren debate, 
and agitation without progress — somewhat surprising, very 
distressing — but which in Washington's own private affairs 
were prosperous and pleasant — being full of business, and 
active, though tranquil, occupations. But his energies were 



GEORGE WASHINGTON. 451 

not confined to, though they were largely exercised upon, 
the improvement of his own large property : indeed, so much 
otherwise, and so beneficially, that the Legislature of his 
native State (Virginia) offered him a very profitable share of 
the improvements he had effected for them, ' as a monument 
of his glory, and of his country's gratitude,' which he very 
gracefully declined for himself ; but requested them to appro- 
priate for the foundation of two Colleges. Various grateful 
bodies of men elect him their President or Representative : 
but he declines practically to accept their kindness by acting 
in such offices. But the Insurrection of Massachussets has 
broken out in 1781, and there being instant and pressing 
danger, he takes up one of the offices to which he lias been 
against his will elected — that of delegate of his native State 
to the Convention of Philadelphia — and presides by unani- 
mous choice of his fellows over that body — the result of 
whose deliberations, you will recollect, was to give the United 
States their present Constitution. This Constitution first 
gave the Union a Central Government, and it was well con- 
ceived, and well adjusted : the rights and relations of the 
several parts, and of the whole, being well represented and 
maintained. The framing of this was not, indeed, due to 
Washington, but the part which he took in it was consider- 
able, and so entirely was he felt to be the chief man in the 
country, that as soon as it w r as determined that there was to 
be a President of the United States, those States were all 
unanimous that their first President must be George Washing- 
ton: and him they elected formally on the 4th of March, 1789. 
The feelings with which he entered again upon public life 
can only perhaps be fully understood by consulting those 
of his letters which relate to this period : but I may read to 
you his entry in his Private Diary (which has been preserved) 
on the close of the day on which he left his home : ' About 
ten o'clock I bade adieu to Mount Vernon, to private life, 



452 GEORGE WASHINGTON. 

and to domestic felicity, and with a mind oppressed with 
more anxious and painful sensations than 1 have words to 
express, set out for New York, with the best dispositions (in- 
deed) to render service to my country in obedience to its call, 
but with little hope of answering its expectations.' The 
journey of Washington to New York was throughout a kind 
of Triumphal Procession, and his Inauguration more grand 
than a Coronation. But the outward portion of it you may 
picture for yourselves ; I will read to you the first and last 
passages of his speech to the assembled Legislature, because 
they relate to himself. 

' Among the vicissitudes incident to life, no event could 
have filled me with greater anxieties than that of which the 
notification was transmitted by your order, and received on 
the 16th of the present month. On the one hand, I was sum- 
moned by my country, whose voice I can never hear but 
with veneration and love, from a retreat which I had chosen 
with the fondest predilection, and in my flattering hopes with 
an immutable decision, as the asylum of my declining years : 
a retreat which was rendered every day more necessary as 
well as more dear to me by the addition of habit to inclina- 
tion, and by frequent interruptions in my health by the 
gradual waste committed on it by time. On the other hand, 
the magnitude and difficulty of the trust to which the voice 
of my country called me being sufficient to awaken, in the 
wisest and most experienced of our citizens, a distrustful 
scrutiny into his qualifications, could not but overwhelm with 
despondence one who inheriting inferior endowments from 
nature and unpractised in the duties of civil administration, 
ought to be peculiarly conscious of his own deficiencies. In 
this conflict of emotions all I dare aver is, that it has been 
my faithful study to collect my duty from a just appreciation 
of every circumstance by which it might be affected — all I 
dare hope is, that if in accepting this task I have been too 



GEORGE WASHINGTON. 453 

much swayed by a grateful remembrance of former instances, 
or by an affectionate sensibility to this transcendant proof of 
the confidence of my fellow-citizens, and have thence too 
little consulted my incapacity as well as my disinclination for 
the weighty and untried cares before me, my error will be 
palliated by the motives which misled me, and its conse- 
quences be judged by my country with some share of the 

partiality in which they originated Such being the 

impressions under which I have, in obedience to the public 
summons, repaired to the present station, it would be pecu- 
liarly improper to omit in this first official act, my fervent 
supplications to that Almighty Being who rules over the 
Universe, who presides in the Councils of nations, and whose 
Providential aids can supply every human defect, that His 
benediction may consecrate to the liberties and happiness of 
the United States a Government instituted by themselves for 
these essential purposes, and may enable every instrument 
employed in its administration to execute with success the 
functions allotted to his charge. In tendering this homage 
to the Great Author of every public and private good, I 
assure myself that it expresses your sentiments not less than 
my own, nor those of my fellow-citizens at large less than 
either. No people can be bound to acknowledge and adore 
the Invisible Hand which conducts the affairs of men more 
than the people of the United States. Every step by which 
they have advanced to the character of an independent nation 
seems to have been distinguished by some token of Provi- 
dential agency. And in the important Revolution just ac- 
complished in the system of their united Government, the 
tranquil deliberations and voluntary consent of so many 
distinct communities from which the event has resulted, 
cannot be compared with the means by which most govern- 
ments have been established, without some return of pious 
gratitude along with an humble anticipation of the future 



454 GEORGE WASHINGTON. 

blessings which the past seem to presage. These reflections 
arising out of the present crisis have forced themselves too 
strongly upon my mind to be suppressed. You will join with 
me, I trust, in thinking that there are none under the influ- 
ence of which the proceedings of a new and free government 
can more auspiciously commence.' 

He concludes thus, after much intervening wisdom : ' Hav- 
ing thus imparted to you my sentiments as they have been 
awakened by the occasion which brings us together, I shall 
take my present leave : but not without resorting once more 
to the Benign Parent of the human race in humble supplica- 
tion, that since He has been pleased to favour the American 
people with opportunities for deliberating in perfect tranquil- 
lity, and dispositions for deciding with unparalleled unanimity, 
on a form of government for the security of their union and 
the advancement of their happiness, so His Divine Blessing 
may be equally conspicuous in the enlarged views, the tem- 
perate consultations, and the wise measures on which the 
success of this government must depend.' 

It would be wholly out of my power to lay before you a 
statement of the difficulties which Washington had to en- 
counter on his assuming the first Presidency of America. 
You will do well, however, to remember that they were 
much greater than in the case of an old-established govern- 
ment, where so much of the routine of business, and of its 
mere machinery, has already been got into easy working 
order : for in Washington's case not only was the whole 
scheme of the Government new, but also in every detail of 
it there was a call for invention, and consideration of the 
relation of each part to the whole, and this not only for the 
present, but also for coming time. But all these difficulties 
he encountered and overcame with such patient perseverance 
and universal approbation, that when he retired from his 
office after four years' service, he was re-elected to it by the 



GEORGE WASHINGTON. 455 

unanimous voice of his country. The pressing difficulties of 
the times induce him to accept it, though very much against 
his personal inclinations. And perhaps we may say that 
nothing but the influence of Washington's character could 
at this time have carried on the harmonious working of the 
Federal constitution. But even so great a character as this 
of his did not escape the far-reaching missiles of calumny 
and of envy. The magnanimous nature of the man, how- 
ever, you may judge of by these two instances. When 
Randolph, the Secretary of State, became so suspected of 
unfaithfulness to American interests, and more than due 
attention to his own, that he was obliged to resign his office, 
and to put himself upon his defence, he considered that his 
vindication would involve the inculpation of Washington : 
and he applied for a confidential letter which the President 
had written to him, of which he had not a copy and the Pre- 
sident had. The President replied, ' I have directed that 
you should have inspection of my letter of 22nd July, agree- 
able to your request, and you are at full liberty to publish 
without reserve any or every private and confidential letter 
I ever wrote you : nay more, every word I ever uttered to 
you, or in your presence, from whence you can derive any 
advantage to your vindication.' And again : some letters 
had been published as Washington's, in the year 1776, 
which were wholly forgeries, but were calculated exceedingly 
to injure his character in the estimation of all who believed 
them to be his — and many did so believe : and these were 
republished in 1796, and re-affirmed to be Washington's. 
Now this baseness enacted by a party to whom he was poli- 
tically opposed, he never in any way publicly noticed until 
he finally retired from public life, and then he wrote a letter 
to the Secretary of State — solemnly pronouncing them to be 
wholly forgeries — and requested that this letter of his might 
be placed among the public archives, for the information of 



456 GEORGE WASHINGTON. 

those who should live when they should not have such op- 
portunities as his contemporaries had of knowing that he 
could not have been the author of them. Thus twenty- 
years he bore the burden of a fearful charge which was 
wholly false, on the strength of his character. 

But at the expiration of his second term of office he finally 
retires from public life : and his farewell address to his 
countrymen, on resigning his office and refusing to be re- 
elected, is a noble summary of his experience in political life, 
and a treasury of maxims far too numerous and too weighty 
for me to do more than refer you to, but which was the most 
appropriate legacy that he could leave to his country. 

The concluding words of it, however, as they are of per- 
sonal interest, I will read to you : — 

1 In offering you, my countrymen, these counsels of an old 
and affectionate friend, I dare not hope that they will make 
the strong and lasting impression that I could wish; that 
they will control the usual current of the passions, or pre- 
vent our nation from running the course which has hitherto 
marked the destiny of nations. But if I may even flatter 
myself that they may be productive of some partial benefit 
or some occasional good — that they may now and then recur 
to moderate the fury of party spirit, to warn against the mis- 
chiefs of foreign intrigue, and to guard against the impostures 
of pretended patriotism, this hope will be a full recompence 
for the solicitude for your welfare by which they have been 
dictated.' 

1 Though in reviewing the incidents of my administration 
I am unconscious of intentional error, I am nevertheless too 
sensible of my defects not to think it probable that I may 
have committed many errors. Whatever they may be, I fer- 
vently beseech the Almighty to avert or mitigate the evils to 
which they may tend. I shall also carry with me the hope 
that my country will never cease to view them with indul- 



GEORGE WASHINGTON. 457 

gence : and that after forty-five years of my life dedicated to 
its service with an upright zeal, the faults of incompetent 
abilities will be consigned to oblivion, as myself must soon 
be to the mansions of rest. 

1 Relying on its kindness in this as in other things, and 
actuated by that fervent love towards it which is so natural 
to a man who views in it the native soil of himself and his 
progenitors for several generations, I anticipate with pleasing 
expectation that retreat in which I promise myself to realise 
without alloy the great enjoyment of partaking, in the midst 
of my fellow-citizens, of the benign influence of good laws 
under a free government — the ever favourite object of my 
heart, and the happy reward, as I trust, of our mutual cares, 
labours, and dangers.' 

He attends the Inauguration of his successor — Mr Adams 
— in 1797, and then retires to Mount Yernon. But in 
1798, on the occasion of a great public need, the President 
nominated to the Senate, ' G eneral Washington to be Lieu- 
tenant-G eneral and Commander-in-Chief of the armies raised 
and to be raised.' The President's feelings — which we learn 
from his letter to the Secretary at War, whom he sent to 
Mount VernOn on the occasion — are very illustrative of 
Washington's, and also very demonstrative of the respect in 
which Washington was held by his fellow-citizens to the 
very last. He says, ' The reasons and motives which pre- 
vailed on me to venture on such a step as the nomination of 
this great and illustrious character, whose voluntary resigna- 
tion alone occasioned my introduction to the office I now 
hold, were too obvious and important to escape the observa- 
tion of any part of America or Europe. But it is a move- 
ment of great delicacy, and will require all your address to 
communicate the subject in a manner that shall be inoffensive 
to his feelings, and consistent with all the respect that is due 
from me to him. If the General should decline the appoint- 



458 GEORGE WASHINGTON. 

ment, all the world will be silent and respectfully acquiesce. 
If he should accept it, all the world, except the enemies of his 
country, will rejoice. If he should come to no decisive, 
determination, but take the subject into consideration, I 
shall not appoint any other Lieutenant-General until his 
conclusion is known.' 

With his usual self-denying- patriotism, and manly willing- 
ness to work — even in old age — Washington accepts the 
appointment : but he does not live to discharge its duties. 
On Friday the 13th of December, 1799, he catches cold from 
being wet while out on his farms: and nearly at midnight on 
the morrow he dies. America was his chief mourner: but all 
civilised nations were now for a while united by the bonds 
of a common grief — for all equally had lost the living Pre- 
sence of a Great and a Good man. 

Little indeed is it that we have this evening seen of 
George Washington ; but if we had the time and patience to 
inspect the vast mass of documents which have been left to 
us by himself and his friends — or even if we could give 
attention to the still vaster mass of what has been written 
about him by others from his time to ours — I do not think 
that we should see much in him of a different kind from that 
which we have already seen. For open his writings where 
you will — his Journals and Letters, his Despatches and Pre- 
sidential Addresses — you will always find the same admirable 
elementary right-mindedness. Whatever is sensible and 
solid, and sound and sober, abounds in them, but not much 
that is notable, less that is memorable, nothing that is sub- 
lime. Nor was there much growth or variety, much elasticity 
or fruitfulness, in his mind : he seems as mature when Colonel 
of Militia as when President of the Union : uniformly rea- 
sonable, equably serene, from earliest youth to latest age 
there reigns predominant in him systematic energy, imper- 



GEORGE WASHINGTON. 459' 

turbable exactitude, unvarying seemliness. Rather a mono- 
tonous man, one may say ; a most methodical one : sedate, 
unexcitable; slowly moving, slowly moved; of strong and 
healthy instincts — clear, practical, decisive : of well-balanced 
faculties and a grand self-control; conspicuously just, unob- 
trusively kindly : unready in speech, but prompt in action : 
sagacious rather than original : of great quickness of percep- 
tion, and an unimpeachable judgment : a first rate Surveyor 
of men and things. Truly a specimen of very solid manhood : 
majestic rather than heroic; with little genial or graceful 
in him, but grave even to grandeur; Fortitude his great 
achievement rather than Daring: doing some wonders, it 
may be, but enduring many : a very proverb of Patriotic 
Patience. 

Such was "Washington. In private life simple and un- 
affected, serene and dignified, but to all but his family and 
friends, reserved : a man of large concerns, liberally but eco- 
nomically ordered: punctual and exact himself in all his 
engagements, and requiring the same from all with whom he 
had to do : of immense appetite for business, and correspond- 
ing power of digestion of it : not very affectionate, not very 
much beloved : religious rather than devout : becomingly 
benevolent: serving his friends faithfully, if not zealously, 
all his life through, and treating the slaves whom he inherited 
with a kindness which prepared them for the Liberty which 
he bequeathed them at his death. 

As a General he exhibited the greatest personal bravery, 
and here only throughout his whole life transgressed the 
bounds of Prudence, setting his soldiers examples of exploits 
which pertained rather to their calling than to his : singularly 
self-possessed in danger, and never desponding in distress : 
always reasonable and accessible, and when occasionally 
stern and severe, yet never perhaps more so than the occa- 
sion required : and though losing more battles than he won, 



460 GEORGE WASHINGTON. 

yet at the same time performing such numerous achievements 
in Retreats and Defences as are recorded of no other General 
of ancient or of modern times. 

As a Political Governor, he was the most honest and dis- 
interested that has ever appeared in the world: a man of 
entire integrity and incorruptibility : accepting power and 
laying it down again with a quite wonderful equanimity: 
without ambition and without deceit. He was, perhaps, the 
only man of his time that was impartial amid parties : he 
was truly not the Leader of any section but the President of 
the whole. He originated little : he controlled much. The 
characteristics of his policy were centralisation at home and 
neutrality abroad : that policy, indeed, was a reflex of the 
man himself, sensible, reserved, attentive to detail : adven- 
turing nothing that was uncertain, entertaining nothing that 
was superfluous: but decided, resolute, and steadfast: the 
just medium, as he called it: as we may say, solid and 
consolidating : strong through calculation : first-rate Political 
Mensuration. 

As citizen and soldier, personally and politically, the best 
modern embodiment of the four Classic Virtues — such I think 
was Washington. 

But Washington is not only very notable in himself, but 
also, as I said at first, as being a specimen of the superior 
products of the great American Continent. The life of Wash- 
ington seems to be about the highest type of life the American 
nature and culture have attained to at all characteristically 
as yet : it is at present the national Ideal of Goodness and of 
Greatness. But we will hope for something higher yet in 
the Great Future which lies before that Great People. For 
truly this Life of Washington — great as we have allowed it 
to be — is, after all, but a quite measurable matter. There 
never, surely, was a man who was great at all who had so 
little that was unfathomable about him : so little of depth of 



GE0KGE WASHINGTON. 461 

light and shade in his nature : so little moving consciousness 
of the Infinite in him, or around him. The world he lived 
in, of thought as well as of action, was an uncommonly com- 
monplace world : simply such a world as he could survey 
pretty completely, and map down, and account for : statistical 
rather than spiritual: visited by no angels of any kind, 
glorified by no celestial visions : wholly, as it seems to me, 
of the earth earthy. With little sympathy, or even acqnaint- 
ance, with any but those of his own country and his own 
age, he seems to have cherished no deep memories of the 
Past, and no large aspirations for the Future — but to have 
lived unmurmuringly and unrejoicingly, absorbed in the duties 
of his day — with good hope indeed for what was to come, 
but with none of the insight of the Philosopher, and none of 
the foresight of the Prophet. All honour — double, treble, 
honour — be from me to Patience : but it did not require a 
Revolution to give us chiefly a new example of this antique 
virtue. We will hope, therefore, for a yet higher Life than 
this of Washington's to arise from out of that great country 
whose Independence he achieved at such a price. Were it 
not, indeed, that this hope was strong, one could not think 
very highly of this American achievement of Independence. 
For truly, in judging of its real worth, we can only justly 
weigh out to it the difference between what we may fairly 
suppose America might have grown to be by this time had 
it remained in connexion with Great Britain, and that which 
it now is : and herein is much loss to be deducted from the 
preponderating gain. Doubtless the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence was a grand clearing of ground, and one must for 
long be interested to see such extensive preparations made 
professedly as the ground-plot of a building to be erected 
according to a new architecture, and which should exhibit to 
the world's wonder at once the best of all temples for Wor- 
ship, and the best of all fields for Work — a Catholic Academy 



462 GEORGE WASHINGTON. 

and a Christian Market-place, all in one. In all achieve- 
ments, however, of this kind — in all conquest of enlarged 
Liberty, and in all acquisition of Power and Wealth — from 
the very first one cannot but ask people, What are you 
going to do with these things, when you have got them? 
Are you going to build up some nobler life for yourselves, 
and through your example for mankind ? or are your freer 
and wealthier lives to be merely the same in kind as others, 
only more abundant ? One cannot, I say, but ask this or 
the like question, and suspend one's judgment as to whether 
they shall be called Blessed or even Great, until such ques- 
tion has been unambiguously answered. Hitherto I conceive 
that this question has been answered by America but ambi- 
guously. Noble specimens of humanity, indeed, are to be 
found in America, but not more abundantly than in England, 
I think : and though there is a most cheering diffusion of 
elementary moral virtues and Christian graces, and of general 
humane culture, among all classes of society there — greater 
perhaps than in any proportionate population on the earth — 
yet the Ideal of Human Life — individual, social, or national 
— does not seem to me greatly elevated or matured. 

But what unstatesmanlike views of things — how enthu- 
siastic ! My answer is, that as I read history, my views may 
be very unstatesmanlike, and yet not necessarily unjust or 
untrue, not unworthy or unwise. It appears to me fpr in- 
stance, as I have already said, that the views of the English 
statesmen — some of the first of their kind — who carried on 
our war with America, were below and not above the stand- 
ard of what I should hope to be the present attainment of 
ordinary cultivated Christian Englishmen. Indeed for my 
own part I must confess, that the statesmanship exhibited in 
the great mass of such history as we have, seems to me for 
the most part to be founded on principles, and to legitimatise 
proceedings, which deprive it of much interest for me : and 



GEORGE WASHINGTON. 463 

it is only by cherishing the faith that it must one day be 
changed for something better, that can make me look for- 
ward as I do with great Hope to the Future. True, Diplo- 
macy founded on Selfishness and maintained by Force has 
stood a long while now : but for those who believe — as I do 
— that the Gospel will ultimately predominate — that the 
Cross will one day conquer, at least in Christendom — then 
that this system has stood so long is but one argument the 
more that it is nearer to its fall. And that this is enthu- 
siastic in any bad sense, how is this ? What ! is an expec- 
tation of superior Honour, and Generosity, and Self-denial 
among nations as the world grows older, is this so unwar- 
rantable as to be bordering on the unsound? Must one 
really believe that they go through all their painful experi- 
ences to no purifying purpose? that great Revolutionary 
Wars such as this of America are to aim at nothing, and to 
result in nothing, but lighter taxes, freer trade, and cheaper 
markets? Is there to be no Moral Progress to accompany 
all increase of Social Freedom ? Can it really be only a 
Fiction that in this Nineteenth Century of Grace, the most 
cultured races — the most exalted nations — are bound to ex- 
emplify Christian as well as heathen virtues, and only a 
Dream that at any time now they may be on the very eve 
of doing so ? Forbid it England — forbid it America : nay, 
this is your peculiar and your united mission — to let the light 
of your common culture — civil and religious — so shine before 
men that all nations may see in you that Liberty and the 
Gospel are the great agents of Human Progress and the 
firmest bonds of Human Brotherhood, and thus through your 
example learn themselves equally to glorify our common 
Father who is in Heaven. 

And now a few words on these Lectures on Great Men 
generally, and I have done. For seven years now I have 



464 GEORGE WASHINGTON. 

from time to time brought before you the characters of men 
whom I have ventured to name as Great : and I must 
confess that I have always done so with pleasure, because I 
really believe that such kind of contemplations may be in 
many ways profitable to us all. Looking calmly at the re- 
lative importance of the personal gains and pleasures of life, 
after some average experience of them, I judge that after the 
one thing needful — the blessing of being at one with God 
through Jesus Christ and the indwelling of the Holy 
Ghost in the heart — and after the ability to discharge ordi- 
nary duties and to confer ordinary benefits — there is no gain 
and no pleasure greater or better than the Society of Supe- 
rior Souls — whether in the flesh or out of it, as may be, 
almost indifferently. And this is a gain and a pleasure 
which it seems to me need not be restricted to a few — may 
be enjoyed to a great degree by all. He who can only read 
readily the English language may now find written in it 
Histories and Biographies of Great and Good Men, far more 
than he can in a long leisure exhaust, and from intelligent 
and sympathetic communion with these his own soul may be 
nourished almost indefinitely. The profit of the reader, indeed, 
will very much depend upon his own general culture ; but 
nevertheless, it is also very generally true that the Greatest 
and Best are the most readily and largely intelligible : they 
are what they are, as I have often told you, by virtue of 
their having possessed in the greatest measure, and culti- 
vated most, the same kind of qualities which we ourselves 
are conscious of possessing, and it is only because they have 
in a greater degree what the humblest of us have in some 
degree, that they have come to exercise large influence ovei 
multitudes. And I would wish you to observe that it has 
not been men of Genius that I have brought before you, but 
men of Moral Greatness. What we call Genius is only one 
form of Greatness — oftenest only certain faculties of extra- 



GE0R3E WASHINGTON. 465 

ordinary sensibility, or power, or capacity, though occasion- 
ally in very rare cases, the whole organization of a man 
heightened harmoniously. But although these men may 
not have had all of them great gifts, yet I think they have 
all had this in common, that they practically recognised the 
worth of man's life on earth to be very great ; that there are 
great issues involved in it : that there are great duties to be 
done by every man. Human life has had an essentially 
moral character to them; it was a Work, a Struggle, a Race, 
a Journey — introductory to another life which should be its 
Wages, its Victory, its Crown, its Home; it was a sacred 
Mystery too, and an unspeakable Gift, an immeasurable 
Dignity — full of Solemnity, full of Joys and Sorrows, with 
great Hopes and Fears commingled — and though beyond all 
successful solution as a Theorem, yet, through God's grace, 
not beyond all successful achievement as a Problem. There- 
fore to them Good and Evil — Thou Shalt and Thou Shalt 
Not — Duty, and Conscience, and Sin — Heaven and Hell — 
these were the greatest of all Realities : and the one thing 
needful for them was so to pass through things Temporal that 
they should not lose the things that are Eternal. Such men 
I think worthy of our Study, of our Sympathy, and of our 
Homage — and such men only. I would not, indeed, pretend 
to judge any man now as one day we believe that he will be 
judged : no man has the faculties for this ; the relation be- 
tween privileges and improvement, between natural con- 
formation and outward influences, being altogether too subtle 
for human cognisance : but there are some men whom the 
world calls Great that I am compelled to call not so, if I 
would not abdicate at once all right to form or to express 
any moral judgments at all. And I refuse them this title 
on no mere personal ground of want of interest in their pur- 
suits or want of sympathy with their kind of genius, but 
simply on this ground — that they themselves have left us 

2g 



466 GEORGE WASHINGTON. 

indisputable voluntary lifelong evidence that they never 
made it any purpose of theirs to seek after the things that 
are Unseen and Eternal — that they never hungered and 
thirsted after Righteousness, while their appetite for many 
carnal things was inexhaustible — that they never strove to 
conform themselves in any way to the great Christian type 
of Humanity, or were ever penitent for not doing so. Such 
men surely are excluded from being even the least in our 
Christendom by no arbitrary sentence — for it is wholly by 
their own — and I can reverence only some attempts at the 
Beatitudes. 

And really I do consider (I must repeat) the contemplation 
of such men as we have had now for so long before us, as 
having especial value for our own times. I am no declaimer 
against our times or our contemporaries, on the whole, as 
you well know ; rather perhaps, I rejoice with too much joy 
in the lot of this Nineteenth Century of Grace ; and delibe- 
rately judge that Christendom at this moment is better than 
Christendom ever was before, and is also tending to indefi- 
nite degrees of improvement. And in the general average of 
mind and character among our own countrymen, I believe 
that there is great comparative progress, that among many 
there is great absolute excellence, and that the number of 
persons who are in some assured degree Christian, is beyond 
all precedent and beyond all thankfulness. And many other 
things might be said for our times : we are generally more 
reasonable and more charitable — more pacific and more free 
— than any of our predecessors. But notwithstanding all 
this, and on the other hand, I am deeply impressed also 
with the very slight structure of the mental and religious 
character of our time. The intellectual superiority that there 
is, seems to me almost all of the Scientific and Mechanical 
kind : clever beyond measure doubtless in all kinds of defi- 
nite calculations, and quite marvellously adaptive of material 



GEORGE WASHINGTON. 467 

means to material ends : but in the estimate of Invisible 
Realities, and in faith in great Principles, there seems to me 
most notable deficiency. Even in that more Religious region, 
of which we should think Faith in the Unseen ought to be 
the very atmosphere in which the soul should breathe, what 
unbelief, what misbelief — what preference of the Mechanical 
to either the Human or the Divine — what substitution of 
the Letter for the Spirit — what singular narrowness, and 
fearfulness, and unsteadiness ; how easily agitated — shocked 
— overthrown — is the spiritual character of almost all. 
Verily, one is sorely tempted sometimes to say in one's haste 
that Moral Cowardice is the Characteristic of our times. 
But now in our present calmer mood we will only say that 
this is the Tendency of our times. Doubtless this is to be 
accounted for : I only say now that I think it ought to be 
counteracted. And as one help towards counteracting it, 
I uphold to you the study of Great Men. In older times or 
in other countries, it might be that this lesson would not be 
so much called for : and it might be wisest for a teacher to 
speak much of the value of Rules and Systems — of institu- 
tions and associations — of the benefit of Organization. But 
with us in our times these things are fully appreciated, and it 
may be unduly magnified, while the everlasting and always 
supreme worth of the individual soul is but too little under- 
stood or regarded. The tendency now, surely, is to merge the 
individual in society, and to diminish originality and self- 
subsistence of personal character. We are strong through 
Association, but weak individually : working miracles by 
Companies, but singularly feeble singly. And if this be so, 
surely there is danger to us here. 

And not only this, but one characteristic aim and effort of 
our times is also to remove difficulties, to multiply facilities 
of all kinds for us : to render man's life smoother and 
smoother: to make duties ever easier: and then through 



468 GEORGE WASHINGTON. 

this improvement in external things to expect individual and 
social amelioration. And this also seems to me to require 
counteraction. It seems to me necessary to preach, and this 
with great earnestness and by a variety of means (of which 
I consider the study of Great Men to be one, and that not 
the least), that we must take heed not to seek any great re- 
formation, or even amelioration, of the individual or of society, 
in anything external or material : but that the great source 
of all spiritual improvement must be always from within. 
Not in the things that are done for us, but in the things that 
are done by us, does our true strength lie. For the indivi- 
dual, the great Renovation comes from the birth of a new 
Idea — a new Affection. The Gospel — our highest Revela- 
tion — trusts in no degree to mechanical forces for this — all 
with it is inward and spiritual — gifts and graces. And we 
see every day that an easier lot does not necessarily produce 
a better life. No — unless we are nobler and more active 
with our increased facilities than otherwise, we shall as- 
suredly grow continually feebler ; and the soul that always 
takes its ease will grow as rapidly unsound as the body that 
never takes its exercise. Verily, this life of ours here on 
earth — in a world full of misery and of sin — was never 
meant to be a thing all sweetness and all ease ; and any 
kingdom of Heaven to be looked for on earth is not a Golden 
Age in which life shall become so easy for us that it will be 
no trouble to live, but rather a time when the noblest of the 
virtues shall be common, and the commonest of the people 
shall be Christian. And so I entreat you to think well of it, 
that as no mechanical readjustment of circumstances will 
ever regenerate a soul, so neither will any kind of social 
systems or arrangements regenerate society. No — spirit only 
can be born of spirit. All Social Reformations hitherto have 
originated in individual souls — in the perception by some 
Conscience of some great Truth or Duty so long neglected 



GEORGE WASHINGTON. 469 

or denied as to be practically new ; they have proceeded from 
the centre of the individual heart to the circumference of the 
social state, by vivid impulses and ever widening circles of 
sympathy. Truly it has been ordained of old, I think, that 
every good man should have some power to reform a nation . 
all the Best do eventually rule it. Ay, the men who ex- 
hibit the highest Ideal realised — these have been, and ever 
will be, the real Kulers of the world. Of the Future, indeed, 
it may not be wise to prophesy ; but in times past at least, 
look at what portion of the Human Family we will, if it 
have attained to any high standard of national life, we sec 
that it has invariably been moulded into very much of its 
characteristic type by the action of individual minds, whom 
it has not only at the time recognised as its Rulers, but has 
ever afterwards cherished as its Exemplars and Benefactors. 
The times of the appearance of these elevating agents, and 
the modes and measures of their influence, for these indeed 
we know no law ; it is impossible for us to anticipate them, 
unprofitable for us to wait for them. But when they do ap- 
pear it is our wisdom and our very life to recognise them and 
to reverence them, and when they have gone from us we shall 
do but ill if we ever cease to greet their names and memorials 
with a deep and affectionate homage. Verily these are men 
who have been, and are, the very salt of our earth, and the 
yet fresh preservation of the dignity and nobleness of that 
nature which is common to all, is due in a very large mea- 
sure to them. And, indeed, I must repeat that when we see 
what kind of men it is now the tendency of our age and 
country to exalt, it is scarcely the time to leave off reminding 
ourselves, and if it may be others, that there have been 
other kinds of men in this world who deserve to be more 
honoured with the sacred speech of man. I fear that such a 
tendency indicates a growing insensibility to the true nature 
of moral nobilitv — a state of mind sure to be succeeded bv a 



470 GEORGE WASHINGTON. 

scepticism as to there being, or even ever having been, such 
nobility : till at length, by neglecting to reverence the really 
Great, instead of growing more and more to Honour all men, 
we shall lapse into that lowest of all idolatries — the worship 
of ourselves. 

But now no more of this, or indeed of Lectures on Great 
Men generally : for important as I deem this matter, it is but 
one of many means of our improvement, and I think it has 
already had its due proportion of our attention. I will only 
say in conclusion, that while it has been a great pleasure to 
me to study with you and for you the great Historical Cha- 
racters with whom we have been conversant these several 
winters now, I have all along been very conscious of the 
difficulty of the task I at first undertook, and now am of the 
poverty of the result I have attained. But, indeed, of very 
few of our fellows can any of us, I think, dare to speak 
judicially. No man, perhaps, may rightly, or can easily, 
judge the very brother he best knows, otherwise than for his 
own terrestrial guidance. And if very difficult indeed is the 
just estimation of Human Character in the easiest case, it is 
especially so in the case of those who are known to us only 
by the uncertain reports of History : and most of all so in 
the case of men whose peculiar gifts make them exceptions 
to many rules of ordinary judgment. But difficult as it is, I 
think that it is what should be attempted by us all from 
time to time very earnestly and very patiently, and that if 
we attempt it in this spirit, and with continual consciousness 
of our fallibility, we shall gain a good deal of benefit to our- 
selves even when our judgments are but imperfect. For the 
highest kind of judgment of such men, indeed, there are re- 
quired qualities which few only possess : and among these I 
am persuaded are an Historical Imagination strong enough 
to enable the judge to place himself in the position of the 



GEORGE WASHINGTON. 471 

subject, and yet not to be carried away there by those of his 
own feelings which that subject never could have had : and 
then a Christian Tolerance large enough to comprehend and 
appreciate the effects which such differences of privilege and 
of position must inevitably produce. Only too commonly do 
we put our present selves into other men's positions, and 
think if we can but do that, we do well. But, alas, ourselves 
— oar present modes of looking at nature and society, and 
history, and all kinds of modern feelings and thoughts, 
translated into the old ages — will never give us the true 
conception of how the inhabitants of those ages really felt. 
And unless we take into full, or at least fair, account men's 
privileges and faculties, their hereditary and educational pre- 
possessions, the moral standard of their times and the laws 
they lived under — and judge them according to these, and 
not according to our own individual temperament or enlighten- 
ment — we shall only condemn ourselves while we judge our 
Brethren. For my own part, I will only say that I consider 
judgments of this kind to be very serious and even solemn 
things : indeed, the votes one gives on such occasions are 
more important than any other votes we have to give. And 
in presenting you, as I have done now for some years, with 
judgments on Great Men, I have by no means such confi- 
dence in my own judicial fitness as to ask you for more than 
a reconsideration of your own opinions where mine may 
differ from them: but I have sufficient self-assurance to 
declare, that I have made my report to you of each one of 
the Men whose stories I have brought before yon, only after 
having used the best opportunities I have had, and under a 
sense of great responsibility as to the importance of not 
misleading you. The longer, however, I study the charac- 
ters of men — in the flesh or out of it — the more impressed I 
become with the difficulty of judging justly, and the more I 



472 GEORGE WASHINGTON. 

suppose that every really great or good man would be willing 
to subscribe the declaration of the greatest and best of all 
such, when he said, ' With me it is a very small thing 

THAT I SHOULD BE JUDGED OF MAN'S JUDGMENT — He THAT 
JUDGETH ME IS THE LORD.' 






41 931 

THE END. 



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